LOUIS HËMON

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

A Stoty of French Canada

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translated by
W. H. BLAKE

Author of ••Brovm Water s'* Etc»

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MARÎA GHAPDELAÎNE.
A TRANSLATION

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
University of Alberta Libraries

https://archive.org/details/mariachapdelaine00hmon_3

MARIA

CHAPDELAINE

BY

LOUIS HÉMON

r(

A translation by

W. H. BLAKE

Author of “Brown Waters/’ etc.

Waronîo:

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED

A// rights of this translation reserved.

Î9J9

Copyright.

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA Ltd.
Toronto

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO - DAEEAS
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

Set up and printed, August, 1921.
Reprinted December, 1921 (twice).

March, 1922.

** August, 1922.

“ December, 1922.

April, 1923.

September. 1924.

“ March, 1925.

November 1925.

S! March, 1928

lune, 1928
April, 1929

CONTENTS

^ liHI

Chapter

1.

-

-

-

-

11

Chapter

11.

-

35

Chapter

III.

-

51

Chapter

IV.

-

-

62

Chapter

V.

»

...

„

77

Chapter

VI.

-

»

-

102

Chapter

VIL

...

-

114

Chapter VIÎL

-

».

118

Chapter

IX.

„

"

126

Chapter

X.

143

Chapter

XL

161

Chapter

XII.

...

171

Chapter XIIL

»

194

Chapter XIV.

206

Chapter

XV.

236

Chapter XVL

».

263

^3 5 57 S

PUBLISHERS* NOTE

We account it a high privilege to sponsor this very
able translation by W. H. Blake of Maria Chapde-
laine

It is not too much to say that Louis Hémon’s in¬
timate view of the moods and manners and moments
of the dwellers in French Canada is indeed an immor¬
telle flowering in the somewhat straggling garden of
our literature. It may well be that Maria Chap-
delaine will take its place in the undulating landscape
of the literature of all time beside such classic stories
as The Vicar of Wakefield and Paul et Virginie.
Such a place is its by right of the sheer genius of its
author. We Canadians do well proudly to acknow¬
ledge the debt which in the name of the little that is
yet permanent in our literature, we owe to Louis
Hémon, who coming to Canada from France found in
it the locale for his story.

Mr. Blake’s was peculiarly the habit of mind and
the lucidity and beauty of literary style to essay the
task of acquainting English-speaking Canada with
this treasury of French-Canadian life and lore. Had
Louis Hémon lived he would have shared the appre¬
ciation all of us must feel of this translator’s extraor¬
dinary fidelity to the spirit of the page of the distin¬
guished creator. Mr. Blake has his reward . . .

The Publishers

PREFACE

Louis Hémon was born at Brest on the 12th of
October, 1880, and, victim of a railway accident, died
at Chapleau in the Province of Ontario, on the 8th
of July, 1913. He was educated in Paris and took his
degree there in modern Oriental languages.

The chief traits of his character were indepen¬
dence, love of travelling and of life in the open air, and
a keen desire to study the manners and customs of
those amongst whom he sojourned.

His first contribution to literature was a story. La
Rivière, submitted in competition to a sporting paper,
the Vélo, in 1904. This gained him the first prize, and
its qualities in matter and style brought the prediction
that he would take a distinguished place among French
authors. Only now is such a place definitely accorded
him, but at last, for all time.

The Auto succeeded the Vélo, and to both papers
Louis Hémon contributed leading articles on sporting
and literary subjects until his death. For one of these
in 1906 another prize was awarded him. He made a
long stay in England to learn the language which he
finally spoke as well as his own. In 1908 he pub¬
lished a novel, Lissie Blakeston, which was greatly
admired both for manner and fidelity of portraiture

Sundry French papers published other stories and nov¬
els of his, and La Patrie of Montreal, on the 12th Jan¬
uary, 1912, contained an article by him: — Québec,
ville Française.

Louis Hémon lived in Canada for a year and a half
in 1912 and 1913, spending months together on the
farms, in field work, to learn the ways of the people
at first hand. This was chiefly in the neighbourhood
of Lake St. John — at Roberval, St. Gedeon and espec¬
ially at Peribonka. Maria Chapdelaine was then writ¬
ten.

The attempt in this English version has been to
capture the spirit Louis Hémon has imprisoned on his
page, rather than to invite its escape in a too literal
rendering. I need hardly say that it has been for me
a labour of love to try and give first to English Can¬
ada and so to the world this “story of French Can¬
ada.”

W. H. Blake.

Pointe au Pic, Quebec,

July, 1921.

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

CHAPTER I.

Itey missa est.

The door opened, and the men of the con¬
gregation began to come out of the church at
Peribonka.

A moment earlier it had seemed quite de¬
serted, this church set by the roadside on the
high bank of the Peribonka, whose icy snow-
covered surface was like a winding strip of
plain. The snow lay deep upon road and
fields, for the April sun was powerless to send
warmth through the gray clouds, and the heavy
spring rains were yet to come. This chill and
universal white, the humbleness of the wooden
church and the wooden houses scattered along
the road, the gloomy forest edging so close that
it seemed to threaten, these all spoke of a harsh
existence in a stern land. But as the men and
11

12

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

boys passed through the doorway and gathered
in knots on the broad steps, their cheery salu¬
tations, the chaff flung from group to group,
the continual interchange of talk, merry or so¬
ber, at once disclosed the unquenchable joyous¬
ness of a people ever filled with laughter and
good humour.

Cleophas Pesant, son of Thadée Pesant the
blacksmith, was already in light-coloured sum¬
mer garments, and sported an American coat
with broad padded shoulders; though on this
cold Sunday he had not ventured to discard
his winter cap of black cloth with hare-lined
ear-laps for the hard felt hat he would have
preferred to wear. Beside him Egide Simard,
and others who had come a long road by sleigh,
fastened their long fur coats as they left the
church, drawing them in at the waist with scar¬
let sashes. The young folk of the village, very
smart in coats with otter collars, gave deferen¬
tial greeting to old Nazaire Larouche; a tall
man with gray hair and huge bony shoulders
who had in no wise altered for the mass his
everyday garb: short jacket of brown cloth
lined with sheepskin, patched trousers, and

A TRANSLATION

13

thick woollen socks under moose-hide mocca¬
sins.

Well, Mr. Larouche, do things go pretty
well across the water?’

‘Not badly, my lads, not so badly.’

Everyone drew his pipe from his pocket, and
the pig’s bladder filled with tobacco leaves cut
by hand, and, after the hour and a half of re¬
straint, began to smoke with evident satisfac¬
tion. The first puffs brought talk of the wea¬
ther, the coming spring, the state of the ice on
Lake St. John and the rivers, of their several
doings and the parish gossip ; after the manner
of men who, living far apart on the worst of
roads, see one another but once a week.

‘The lake is solid yet,’ said Cl^ophas Pe¬
sant, ‘but the rivers are no longer safe. The
ice went this week beside the sand-bank oppo¬
site the island, where there have been warm
spring-holes all winter.’ Others began to dis¬
cuss the chances of the crops, before the ground
was even showing.

‘I tell you that we shall have a lean year,’
asserted one old fellow, ‘the frost got in be¬
fore the last snows fell.’

14

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

At length the talk slackened and all faced
the top step, where Napoleon Laliberté was
making ready, in accord with his weekly cus¬
tom, to announce the parish news. He stood
there motionless for a little while, awaiting
quiet, — hands deep in the pockets of the heavy
lynx coat, knitting his forehead and half clos¬
ing his keen eyes under the fur cap pulled well
over his ears ; and when silence fell he began to
give the news at the full pitch of his voice, in
the manner of a carter who encourages his
horses on a hill,

‘The work on the wharf will go forward at
once ... I have been sent money by the Gov¬
ernment, and those looking for a job should see
me before vespers. If you want this money to
stay in the parish instead of being sent back to
Quebec you had better lose no time in speak¬
ing to me.’

Some moved over in his direction; others,
indifferent, met his announcement with a
laugh. The remark was heard in an envious
undertone : — ‘And who will be foreman at
three dollars a day.? Perhaps good old Lali¬
berté . . .’

A TRANSLATION

15

But it was said jestingly rather than in
malice, and the speaker ended by adding his
own laugh.

Hands still in the pockets of his big coat,
straightening himself and squaring his shoul¬
ders as he stood there upon the highest step,
Napoleon Laliberté proceeded in loudest
tones : —

‘A surveyor from Roberval will be in the
parish next week. If anyone wants his land
surveyed before mending his fences for the
summer, this is to let him know.’

The item was received without interest.
Peribonka farmers are not particular about
correcting their boundaries to gain or lose a few
square feet, since the most enterprising among
them have still two-thirds of their grants to
clear, — endless acres of woodland and swamp
to reclaim.

He continued : — ^Two men are up here with
money to buy furs. If you have any bear,
mink, muskrat or fox you will find these men
at the store until Wednesday, or you can apply
to François Paradis of Mistassini who is with
them. They have plenty of money and will
pay cash for first-class pelts.’ His news fin-

16

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

ished, he descended the steps. A sharp-faced
little fellow took his place.

‘Who wants to buy a fine young pig of my
breeding.?’ he asked, indicating with his finger
something shapeless that struggled in a bag at
his feet. A great burst of laughter greeted
him. They knew them well, these pigs of
Hormidas’ raising. No bigger than rats, and
quick as squirrels to jump the fences.

‘Twenty-five cents!’ one young man bid
chaffingly.

, ‘Fifty cents !’

‘A dollar!’

‘Don’t play the fool, Jean. Your wife will
never let you pay a dollar for such a pig as
that.’

Jean stood his ground: — ‘A dollar, I won’t
go back on it.’

Hormidas Bérubé with a disgusted look on
his face awaited another bid, but only got jokes
and laughter.

Meantime the women in their turn had be¬
gun to leave the church. Young or old, pretty
or ugly, nearly all were well clad in fur cloaks,
or in coats of heavy cloth; for, honouring the

A TRANSLATION

17

Sunday mass, sole festival of their lives, they
had doffed coarse blouses and homespun
petticoats, and a stranger might well have
stood amazed to find them habited almost
with elegance in this remote spot ; still F rench
to their finger-tips in the midst of the bound¬
less lonely forest and the snow, and as taste¬
fully dressed, these peasant women, as most of
the middle-class folk in provincial France.

Cleophas Pesant waited for Louisa Trem¬
blay who was alone, and they went off together
along the wooden sidewalk in the direction of
the house. Others were satisfied to exchange
jocular remarks with the young girls as they
passed, in the easy and familiar fashion of the
country, — natural enough too where the chil¬
dren have grown up together from infancy.

Pite Gaudreau, looking toward the door of
the church, remarked: — ‘Maria Chapdelaine
is back from her visit to St. Prime, and there is
her father come to fetch her.’ Many in the
village scarcely knew the Chapdelaines.

‘Is it Samuel Chapdelaine who has a farm
in the woods on the other side of the river,
above Honfieur.?’

18

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘That’s the man.’

‘And the girl with him is his daughter?
Maria . .

‘Yes, she has been spending a month at St.
Prime with her mother’s people. They are
Bouchards, related to Wilfrid Bouchard of St.
Gedeon . . .’

Interested glances were directed towards the
top of the steps. One of the young people paid
Maria the countryman’s tribute of admira¬
tion : — ‘A fine hearty girl !’ said he.

‘Right you are ! A fine hearty girl, and one
with plenty of spirit too. A pity that she lives
so far off in the woods. How are the young
fellows of the village to manage an evening at
their place, on the other side of the river and
above the falls, more than a dozen miles away
and the last of them with next to no road?’

The smiles were bold enough as they spoke
of her, this inaccessible beauty; but as she
came down the wooden steps with her father
and passed near by, they were taken with bash¬
fulness and awkwardly drew back, as though
something more lay between her and them than
the crossing of a river and twelve miles of in¬
different woodland road.

A TRANSLATION

19

Little by little the groups before the church
dissolved. Some returned to their houses,
after picking up all the news that was going;
others, before departing, were for spending an
hour in one of the two gathering places of the
village; the cure’s house or the .general store.
Those who came from the back concessions,
stretching along the very border of the forest,
one by one untied their horses from the row
and brought their sleighs to the foot of the steps
for their women and children.

Samuel Chapdelaine and Maria had gone
but a little way when a young man halted
them.

‘Good day to you, Mr. Chapdelaine. Good
day. Miss Maria. I am in great luck at meet¬
ing you, since your farm is so high up the river
and I don’t often come this way m_yself.’

His bold eyes travelled from one to the oth¬
er. When he averted them it seemed by a con¬
scious effort of politeness; swiftly they re¬
turned, and their glance, bright, keen, full of
honest eagerness, was questioning and discon¬
certing.

‘François Paradis!’ exclaimed Chapdelaine.

20

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘ This is indeed a bit of luck, for I haven’t seen
you this long while, François. And your fa¬
ther dead too. Have you held on to the
farm?’

The young man did not answer; he was
looking expectantly at Maria with a frank
smile, awaiting a word from her.

‘You remember François Paradis of Mis¬
tassini, Maria? He has changed very little.’

‘Nor have you, Mr. Chapdelaine. But
your daughter, that is a different story; she
is not the same, yet I should have known her
at once.’

They had spent the last evening at St. Michel
de Mistassini — viewing everything in the full
light of the afternoon : the great wooden
bridge, covered in and painted red, not unlike
an amazingly long Noah’s ark; the high hills
rising almost from the very banks of the river,
the old monastery crouched between the river
and the heights, the water that seethed and
whitened, flinging itself in wild descent down
the staircase of a giant. But to see this young
man after seven years, and to hear his name
spoken, aroused in Maria memories clearer

A Tl^NSLATION

21

and more lively than she was able to evoke
of the events and sights of yesterday.

‘François Paradis ! . . . Why surely, father,
I remember François Paradis.’ And Fran¬
çois, content, gave answer to the questions of a
moment ago.

‘No, Mr. Chapdelaine, I have not kept the
farm. When the good man died I sold every¬
thing, and since then I have been nearly all the
time in the woods, trapping or bartering with
the Indians of Lake Mistassini and the Rivière
aux Foins. I also spent a couple of years in
the Labrador.’ His look passed once more
from Samuel Chapdelaine to Maria, and her
eyes fell.

‘Are you going home today?’ he asked.

‘Yes; right after dinner.’

‘I am glad that I saw you, for I shall be pass¬
ing up the river near your place in two or three
weeks, when the ice goes out. I am here with
some Belgians who are going to buy furs from
the Indians; we shall push up so soon as the
river is clear, and if we pitch a tent above the
falls close to your farm I will spend the even¬
ing with you.’

22

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘That is good, François, we will expect you.’

The alders formed a thick and unbroken
hedge along the river Peribonka ; but the leaf¬
less stems did not shut away the steeply sloping
bank, the levels of the frozen river, the dark
hem of the woods crowding to the farther edge
— leaving between the solitude of the great
trees, thick-set and erect, and the bare desolate¬
ness of the ice only room for a few narrow
fields, still for the most part uncouth with
stumps, so narrow indeed that they seemed to
be constrained in the grasp of an unkindly land.

To Maria Chapdelaine, glancing inattent¬
ively here and there, there was nothing in all
this to make one feel lonely or afraid. Never
had she known other prospect from October
to May, save those still more depressing and
sad, farther yet from the dwellings of man and
the marks of his labour ; and moreover all about
her that morning had taken on a softer outline,
was brighter with a new promise, by virtue of
something sweet and gracious that the future
had in its keeping. Perhaps the coming
springtime . . . perhaps another happiness
that was stealing toward her, nameless and un¬
recognized.

A TRANSLATION

23

Samuel Chapdelaine and Maria were to dine
with their relative Azalma Larouche, at whose
house they had spent the night. No one was
there but the hostess, for many years a widow,
and old Nazaire Larouche, her brother-in-law.
Azalma was a tall, flat-chested woman with the
undeveloped features of a child, who talked
very quickly and almost without taking breath
while she made ready the meal in the kitchen.
From time to time she halted her preparations
and sat down opposite her visitors, less for the
moment’s repose than to give some special em¬
phasis to what she was about to say; but the
seasoning of a dish or the setting of the table
speedily claimed her attention again, and the
monologue went on amid the clatter of dishes
and frying-pans.

The pea-soup was soon ready and on the
table. While eating, the two men talked about
the condition of their farms and the state of the
spring ice.

‘You should be safe enough for crossing this
evening,’ said Nazaire Larouche, ‘but it will
be touch-and-go, and I think you will be about
the last? The current is strong below the fall

24

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

and already we have had three days of rain.’

‘Everybody says that the ice will hold for a
long time yet,’ replied his sister-in-law.
‘Better sleep here again to-night, and after sup¬
per the young folks from the village will drop in
and spend the evening. It is only fair that
Maria should have a little more amusement
before you drag her off into your woods up
there.’

‘She has had plenty of gaiety at St. Prime ;
singing and games almost every night. We
are greatly obliged to you, but I am going to
put the horse in immediately after dinner so
as to get home in good time.’

Old Nazaire Larouche spoke of the morn¬
ing’s sermon which had struck him as well
reasoned and fine ; then after a spell of silence
he exclaimed abruptly: — ‘Have you baked?’

His amazed sister-in-law gaped at him for
a moment before it stole upon her that this
was his way of asking for bread. A little later
he attacked her with another question: — ‘Is
your pump working well?’

Which signified that there was no water on
the table. Azalma rose to get it, and behind

A TRANSLATION

25

her back the old fellow sent a sly wink in the
direction of Maria. T assault her with par¬
ables,’ chuckled he. ‘It’s politer.’

On the plank walls of the house were pasted
old newspapers, and calendars hung there
such as the manufacturers of farm implements
or grain merchants scatter abroad, and also
prints of a religious character ; a representation
in crudest colour and almost innocent of per¬
spective of the basilica at Ste. Anne de Beau¬
pré; a likeness of Pope Pius X.; a chromo
where the palely-smiling Virgin Mary dis¬
closed her bleeding heart encircled with a
golden nimbus.

‘This is nicer than our house,’ thought
Maria to herself.

Nazaire Larouche kept directing attention
to his wants with dark sayings: — ‘Was your
pig very lean.?’ he demanded; or perhaps: —
‘Fond of maple sugar, are you.? I never get
enough of it . . .’

And then Azalma would help him to a se¬
cond slice of pork or fetch the cake of maple
sugar from the cupboard. When she wearied
of these strange table-manners and bade him

26

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

help himself in the usual fashion, he smoothed
her ruffled temper with good-humoured ex¬
cuses.

‘Quite right. Quite right. I won’t do it
again; but you always loved a joke, Azalma.
When you have youngsters like me at dinner
you must look for a little nonsense.’

Maria smiled to think how like he was to her
father ; both tall and broad, with grizzled hair,
their faces tanned to the colour of leather, and,
shining from their eyes, the quenchless spirit
of youth which keeps alive in the country¬
man of Quebec his imperishable simple-heart¬
edness.

They took the road almost as soon as the
meal was over. The snow, thawed on top by
the early rains, and frozen anew during the
cold nights, gave an icy surface that slipped
away easily under the runners. The high blue
hills on the other side of Lake St. John which
closed the horizon behind them were gradually
lost to view as they returned up the long bend
of the river.

Passing the church, Samuel Chapdelaine
said thoughtfully: — ‘The mass is beautiful.

A TRANSLATION

27

I am often very sorry that we live so far from
churches. Perhaps not being able to attend to
our religion every Sunday hinders us from be¬
ing just so fortunate as other people.’

Tt is not our fault,’ sighed Maria, ‘we are
too far away.’

Her father shook his head regretfully. The
imposing ceremonial, the Latin chants, the
lighted tapers, the solemnity of the Sunday
mass never failed to fill him with exaltation.
In a little he began to sing : —

J’irai la voir un jour,

M’asseoir près de son trône,

Reçevoir ma couronne
Et régner à mon tour . . .

His voice was strong and true, and he used
the full volume of it, singing with deep fervour ;
but ere long his eyes began to close and his chin
to drop toward his breast. Driving always
made him sleepy, and the horse, aware that the
usual drowsiness had possession of his master,
slackened his pace and at length fell to a walk.

‘Get up there, Charles Eugene !’

He had suddenly waked and put his hand

28

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

out for the whip. Charles Eugene resigned
himself and began to trot again. Many gener¬
ations ago a Chapdelaine cherished a long feud
with a neighbour who bore these names, and
had forthwith bestowed them upon an old,
tired, lame horse of his, that he might give him¬
self the pleasure every day when passing the
enemy’s house of calling out very loudly: —
^Charles Eugene, ill-favoured beast that you
are! Wretched, badly brought up creature!
Get along, Charles Eugene!’ For a whole
century the quarrel was dead and buried ; but
the Chapdelaines ever since had named their
successive horses Charles Eugene.

Once again the hymn rose in clear ringing
tones, intense with feeling : —

Au ciel, au ciel, au ciel,

J’irai la voir un jour . . .

And again sleep was master, the voice died
away, and Maria gathered up the reins dropped
from her father’s hand.

The icy road held alongside the frozen river.
The houses on the other shore, each surround-

A TRANSLATION

29

ed with its patch of cleared land, were sadly
distant from one another. Behind the clear¬
ings, and on either side of them to the river’s
bank, it was always forest : a dark green back¬
ground of cypress against which a lonely birch
tree stood out here and there, with its bole
naked and white as the column of a ruined
temple.

On the other side of the road the strip of
cleared land was continuous and broader; the
houses, set closer together, seemed an outpost
of the village; but ever behind the bare fields
marched the forest, following like a shadow, a
gloomy frieze without end between white
ground and gray sky.

‘Charles Eugene, get on there !’

Chapdelaine woke and made his usual good-
humoured feint toward the whip; but by the
time the horse slowed down, after a few livelier
paces, he had dropped off again, his hands
lying open upon his knees showing the worn
palms of the horse-hide mittens, his chin rest¬
ing upon the coat’s thick fur.

After a couple of miles the road climbed a
steep hill and entered the unbroken woods,

30

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

The houses standing at intervals in the flat
country all the way from the village came
abruptly to an end, and there was no longer
anything for the eye to rest upon but a wilder¬
ness of bare trunks rising out of the universal
whiteness. Even the incessant dark green of
balsam, spruce and gray pine was rare ;the few
young and living trees were lost among the end¬
less dead, either lying on the ground and buried
in snow, or still erect but stripped and black¬
ened. Twenty years before great forest fires
had swept through, and the new growth was
only pushing its way amid the standing skele¬
tons and the charred down-timber. Little
hills followed one upon the other, and the road
was a succession of ups and downs scarcely
more considerable than the slopes of an ocean
swell, from trough to crest, from crest to
trough.

Maria Chapdelaine drew the cloak about
her, slipped her hands under the warm robe of
gray goat-skin and half closed her eyes.
There was nothing to look at ; in the settle¬
ments new houses and barns might go up from
year to year, or be deserted and tumble into

A TRANSLATION

31

ruin ; but the life of the woods is so unhurried
that one must needs have more than the pa¬
tience of a human being to await and mark its
advance.

Alone of the three travellers the horse
remained fully awake. The sleigh glided over
the hard snow, grazing the stumps on either
hand level with the track. Charles Eugene
accurately followed every turn of the road,
took the short pitches at a full trot and climbed
the opposite hills with a leisurely pace, like the
capable animal he was, who might be trusted to
conduct his masters safely to the door-step of
their dwelling without being annoyed by guid¬
ing word or touch of rein.

Some miles farther, and the woods fell away
again, disclosing the river. The road descended
the last hill from the higher land and sank al¬
most to the level of the ice. Three houses were
dotted along the mile of bank above ; but they
were humbler buildings than those of the vil¬
lage, and behind them scarcely any land was
cleared and there was little sign of cultiva¬
tion : — ^built there, the}^ seemed to be, only in
witness of the presence of man.

32

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Charles Eugene swung sharply to the right,
stiffened his forelegs to hold back on the slope
and pulled up on the edge of the ice. Chapde-
laine opened his eyes.

‘Here father/ said Maria, ‘take the reins!’
He seized them, but before giving his horse the
word, took some moments for a careful scru¬
tiny of the frozen surface.

‘There is a little water on the ice,’ said he,
‘and the snow has melted ; but we ought to be
able to cross all the same. Get up, Charles
Eugene.’

The horse lowered his head and sniffed at the
white expanse in front of him, then adventured
upon it without more ado./ The ruts of the
winter road were gone, the little firs which had
marked it at intervals were nearly all fallen
and lying in the half-thawed snow; as they
passed the island the ice cracked twice without
breaking. Charles Eugene trotted smartly
toward the house of Charles Lindsay on the
other bank. But when the sleigh reached mid¬
stream, below the great fall, the horse had per¬
force to slacken pace by reason of the water
which had overflowed the ice and wetted the

A TRANSLATION

33

snow. Very slowly they approached the
shore ; there remained only some thirty feet to
be crossed when the ice began to go up and
down under the horse’s hoofs.

Old Chapdelaine, fully awake now, was on
his feet; his eyes beneath the fur cap shone
with courage and quick resolve.

‘Go on, Charles Eugene! Go on there!’ he
roared in his big voice. The wise beast dug his
calked shoes through the deep slush and sprang
for the bank, throwing himself into the collar
at every leap. Just as they reached land a
cake of ice tilted beneath their weight and sank,
leaving a space of open water.

Samuel Chapdelaine turned about. ‘We are
the last to cross this year,’ said he. And he
halted the horse to breathe before putting him
at the hill.

After following the main road a little way
they left it for another which plunged into the
woods. It was scarcely more than a rough
trail, still beset with roots, turning and twist¬
ing in all directions to avoid boulders and
stumps. Rising to a plateau where it wound
back and forth through burnt lands it gave an

34

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

occasional glimpse of steep hillside, of the rocks
piled in the channel of the frozen rapid, the
higher and precipitous opposing slope above
the fall, and at the last resumed a desolate way
amid fallen trees and blackened rampikes.

The little stony hillocks they passed through
seemed to close in behind them; the burnt
lands gave place to darkly-crowding spruces
and firs ; now and then they caught moment¬
ary sight of the distant mountains on the Ri¬
vière Alec ; and soon the travellers discerned a
clearing in the forest, a mounting column of
smoke, the bark of a dog.

‘They will be glad to see you again, Maria,’
said her father. ‘They have been lonesome
for you, every one of them.’

CHAPTER IL

It was supper-time before Maria had answered
ail the questions, told of her journey down to
the last and littlest item, and given not only
the news of St. Prime and Peribonka but
everything else she had been able to gather up
upon the road,

Tit’Bé, seated facing his sister, smoked pipe
after pipe without taking his eyes off her for a
single moment, fearful of missing some highly
important disclosure that she had hitherto held
back. Little Alma Rose stood with an arm
about her neck; Telesphore was listening too,
as he mended his dog’s harness with bits of
string. Madame Chapdelaine stirred the fire
in the big cast-iron stove, came and went,
brought from the cupboard plates and dishes,
the loaf of bread and pitcher of milk, tilted
the great molasses jar over a glass jug. Not
35

36

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

seldom she stopped to ask Maria something,
or to catch what she was saying, and stood for
a few moments dreaming, hands on her hips,
as the villages spoken of rose before her in
memory.

‘ . And so the church is finished — a

beautiful stone church, with pictures on the
walls and coloured glass in the windows . . .
How splendid that must be! Johnny Bouchard
built a new barn last year, and it is a little
Perron, daughter of Abelard Perron of St.
Jerome, who teaches school . . . Eight
years since I was at St. Prime, just to think
of it! A fine parish indeed, that would have
suited me nicely ; good level land as far as you
can see, no rock cropping up and no bush,
everywhere square-cornered fields with hand¬
some straight fences and heavy soil. Only
two hours’ drive to the railway . . . Per¬
haps it is wicked of me to say so; but all my
married life I have been sorry that your
father’s taste was for moving, and pushing
on and on into the woods, and not for living on
a farm in one of the old parishes.’

Through the little square window she threw

A TRANSLATION

37

a melancholy glance over the scanty cleared
fields behind the house, the barn built of ill-
joined planks that showed marks of fire, and
the land beyond still covered with stumps and
encompassed by the forest, whence any return
of hay or grain could only be looked for at the
end of long and patient waiting.

‘0 look,’ said Alma Rose, ‘here is Chien
come for his share of petting.’ The dog laid
his long head with the sad eyes upon her knee ;
uttering little friendly words Maria bent and
caressed him*.

‘He has been lonely without you like the
rest of us,’ came back from Alma Rose. ‘Ev¬
ery morning he used to look at your bed to see
if you were not back.’ She called him to her.
‘Come Chien; come and let me pet you too.’

Chien went obediently from one to the other,
half closing his eyes at each pat. Maria looked
about her to see if some change, unlikely
though that might be, had taken place while
she was away.

The great three-decked stove stood in the
centre of the house; the sheet-iron stove-pipe,
after mounting for some feet, turned at a right

38

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

angle and was carried through the house to the
outside, so that none of the precious warmth
should be lost. In a corner was the large wood¬
en cupboard; close by, the table; a bench
against the wall ; on the other side of the door
the sink and the pump, A partition begin-
ing at the opposite wall seemed designed to
divide the house in two, but it stopped before
reaching the stove and did not begin again be¬
yond it, in such fashion that these divisions of
the only room were each enclosed on three
sides and looked like a stage setting — that con¬
ventional type of scene where the audience are
invited to imagine that two distinct apart¬
ments exist although they look into both at
once.

In one of these compartments the father and
mother had their bed; Maria and Alma Rose
in the other. A steep stairway ascended from
a corner to the loft where the boys slept in the
summertime; with the coming of winter they
moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth
of the stove with the rest of the family.

Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated

A TRANSLATION

39

calendars of shopkeepers in Roberval and Chi¬
coutimi; a picture of the infant Jesus in his
mother’s arms — a rosy-faced Jesus with great
blue eyes, holding out his chubby hands; a
representation of some unidentified saint look¬
ing rapturously heavenward; the first page of
the Christmas number of a Quebec newspaper,
filled with stars big as moons and angels flying
with folded wings.

Were you a good girl while I was away,
Alma Rose.?’

It was the mother who replied : ‘Alma Rose
was not too naughty; but Telesphore has been
a perfect torment to me. It is not so much that
he does what is wrong ; but the things that he
says ! One might suppose that the boy had not
all his wits.’

Telesphore busied himself with the dog-har¬
ness and made believe not to hear. Young
Telesphore’s depravities supplied this house¬
hold with its only domestic tragedy. To satisfy
her own mind and give him a proper convic¬
tion of besetting sin his mother had fashioned
for herself a most involved kind of polytheism.

40

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

had peopled the world with evil spirits and good
who influenced him alternately to err or to re¬
pent. The boy had come to regard himself as
a mere battleground where devils who v/ere very
sly, and angels of excellent purpose but little
experience, waged endless unequal warfare.

Gloomily would he mutter before the empty
preserve jar: Tt was the Demon of gluttony
who tempted me.’

Returning from some escapade with torn
and muddy clothes he would anticipate re¬
proach with his explanation: — ‘The Demon of
disobedience lured me into that. Beyond doubt
it was he.’ With the same breath asserting in¬
dignation at being so misled, and protesting
the blamelessness of his intentions.

‘But he must not be allowed to come back,
eh, mother ! He must not be allowed to come
back, this bad spirit. I will take father’s gun
and I will shoot him . . .’

‘You cannot shoot devils with a gun,’ ob¬
jected his mother. ‘But when you feel the
temptation coming, seize your rosary and say
your prayers.’

Telesphore did not dare to gainsay this ; but

A TRANSLATION

41

he shook his head doubtfully. The gun seemed
to him both the surer and the more amusing
way, and he was accustomed to picture to him¬
self a tremendous duel, a lingering slaughter
from which he would emerge without spot or
blemish, forever set free from the wiles of the
Evil One.

Samuel Chapdelaine came into the house
and supper was served. The sign of the cross
around the table ; lips moving in a silent Béné¬
dicité, which Telesphore and Alma Rose re¬
peated aloud ; again the sign of the cross ; the
noise of chairs and bench drawn in ; spoons clat¬
tering on plates. To Maria it was as though
since her absence, she was giving attention for
the first time in her life to these sounds and
movements ; that they possessed a different sig¬
nificance from movements and sounds else¬
where, and invested with some peculiar quality
of sweetness and peace all that happened in
that house far off in the woods.

Supper was nearly at an end when a foot¬
step sounded without; Chien pricked up his
ears but gave no growl.

‘A visitor,’ announced Mother Chapde-

42

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

laine, ^Eutrope Gagnon has come over to see
us/

It was an easy guess, as Eutrope Gagnon was
their only neighbour. The year before he had
taken up land two miles away, with his brother ;
the brother had gone to the shanties for the
winter, and he was left alone in the cabin they
had built of charred logs. He appeared on the
threshold, lantern in hand.

‘Greeting to each and all,’ was the saluta¬
tion as he pulled off his woollen cap. ‘A fine
night, and there is still a crust on the snow ; as
the walking was good I thought that I would
drop in this evening to find out if you were
back.’

Although he came to see Maria, as all knew,
it was to the father of the house that he directed
his remarks, partly through shyness, partly out
of deference to the manners of the country. He
took the chair that was offered him.

‘The weather is mild; if it misses turning
wet it will be by very little. One can feel that
the spring rains are not far off . . .’

It was the orthodox beginning to one of those
talks among country folk which are like an

A TRANSLATION

43

interminable song, full of repetitions, each
speaker agreeing with the words last uttered
and adding more to the same effect. And nat¬
urally the theme was the Canadian’s never-
ending plaint; his protest, falling short of
actual revolt, against the heavy burden of the
long winter.

The beasts have been in the stable since
the end of October and the barn is just about
empty,’ said Mother Chapdelaine. ‘Unless
spring comes soon I don’t know what we are
going to do.’

Three weeks at least before they can be
turned out to pasture.’

‘A horse, three cows, a pig and the sheep,
without speaking of the fowls; it takes some¬
thing to feed them !’ this from Tit’Bé with an
air of grov/n-up wisdom.

He smoked and talked with the men now
by virtue of his fourteen years, his broad
shoulders and his knowledge of husbandry.
Eight years ago he had begun to care for the
stock, and to replenish the store of wood for the
house with the aid of his little sled. Some¬
what later he had learned to call Heulki

44

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Heulle! very loudly behind the thin-flanked
cows, and Hue! Dial Harrié! when the horses
were ploughing; to manage a hay-fork and to
build a rail fence. These two years he had
taken turn beside his father with ax and scythe,
driven the big wood-sleigh over the hard snow,
sown and reaped on his own responsibility ; and
thus it was that no one disputed his right freely
to express an opinion and to smoke incessantly
the strong leaf-tobacco. His face was still
smooth as a child’s, with immature features
and guileless eyes, and one not knowing him
would probably have been surprised to hear
him speak with all the deliberation of an older
and experienced man, and to see him everlast¬
ingly charging his wooden pipe; but in the
Province of Quebec the boys are looked upon
as men when they undertake men’s work,
and as to their precocity in smoking there is
always the excellent excuse that it affords some
protection in summer against the attacking
swarms of black-flies, mosquitos and sand¬
flies. .

‘How nice it would be to live in a country
where there is hardly any winter, and where

A TRANSLATION

45

the earth makes provision for man and beast.
Up here man himself, by dint of work, must
care for his animals and his land. If we did
not have Esdras and Da’Bé earning good wages
in the woods how could we get along.?’

‘But the soil is rich in these parts,’ said
Eutrope Gagnon.

‘The soil is good but one must battle for it
with the forest; and to live at all you must
watch every copper, labour from morning to
night, and do everything yourself because there
is no one near to lend a hand.’

Mother Chapdelaine ended with a sigh. Her
thoughts were ever fondly revisiting the older
parishes where the land has long been cleared
and cultivated, and where the houses are neigh¬
bourly — her lost paradise.

Her husband clenched his fists and shook his
head with an obstinate gesture. ‘Only you
wait a few months . . . When the boys are
back from the woods we shall set to work, they
two, Tit’Bé and I, and presently we shall have
our land cleared. With four good men ax in
hand and not afraid of work, things will go
quickly, even in the hard timber. Two years

46

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

from now there will be grain harvested, and
pasturage that will support a good herd of
cattle. I tell you that we are going to make
land.’

‘Make land!’ Rude phrase of the country,
summing up in two words all the heart-break¬
ing labour that transforms the incult woods,
barren of sustenance, to smiling fields, ploughed
and sown. Samuel Chapdelaine’s eyes flamed
with enthusiasm and determination as he spoke.

For this was the passion of his life; the pas¬
sion of a man whose soul was in the clearing,
not the tilling of the earth. Five times since
boyhood had he taken up wild land, built a
house, a stable and a barn, wrested from the
unbroken forest a comfortable farm; and five
times he had sold out to begin it all again far¬
ther north, suddenly losing interest; energy
and ambition vanishing once the first rough
work was done, when neighbours appeared
and the countryside began to be opened
up and inhabited Some there were who
entered into his feelings ; others praised the
courage but thought little of the wisdom
and such were fond of saying that if good

A TRANSLATION

47

sense had led him to stay in one place he and
his would now be at their ease,

‘At their ease . . 7 O dread God of the
Scriptures, worshipped by these countryfolk of
Quebec without a quibble or a doubt, who hast
condemned man to earn his bread in the sweat
of his face, canst Thou for a moment smooth
the awful frown from Thy forehead when Thou
art told that certain of these Thy creatures
have escaped the doom, and live at their ease?

‘At their ease . . Truly to know what
it means one must have toiled bitterly from
dawn to dark with back and hands and feet,
and the children of the soil are those who have
best attained the knowledge. It means the
burden lifted; the heavy burden of labour and
of care. It means leave to rest, the which, even
if it be unused, is a new mercy every moment.
To the old it means so much of the pride of life
as no one would deny them, the late revelation
of unknown delights, an hour of idleness, a dis¬
tant journey, a dainty or a purchase indulged
in without anxious thought, the hundred and
one things desirable that a competence assures.

So constituted is the heart of man that most

48

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

of those who have paid the ransom and won
liberty — ease — have in the winning of it,
created their own incapacity for enjoying the
conquest, and toil on till death; it is the others,
the ill-endowed or the unlucky, who have been
unable to overcome fortune and escape their
slavery, to whom the state of ease has all those
charms of the inaccessible.

It may be that the Chapdelaines so were
thinking, and each in his own fashion;
the father with the unconquerable optimism of
a man who knows himself strong and believes
himself wise; the mother with a gentle resig¬
nation ; the others, the younger ones, in a less
definite way and without bitterness, seeing be¬
fore them a long life in which they could not
miss attaining happiness.

Maria stole an occasional glance at Eu-
trope Gagnon, but she quickly turned away, for
she always surprised his humbly worshipping
eyes. For a year she had become used to his
frequent visits, nor felt displeasure when every
Sunday evening added to the family circle
this brown face that was continually so patient
and good-humoured ; but the short absence of

A TRANSLATION

49

a month had not left things the same, for she
had brought home to the fireside an undefined
feeling that a page of her life was turned, in
which he would have no share.

The ordinary subjects of conversation ex¬
hausted, they played cards: quatr e-sept and
boeuf; then Eutrope looked at his big silver
watch and said that it was time to be going.
His lantern lit, the good-byes said, he halted on
the threshold for a moment to observe the
night.

Tt is raining!’ he exclaimed.

His hosts made towards the door to see for
themselves; the rain had in truth begun, a
spring rain with great drops that fell heavily,
under which the snow was already softening
and melting.

‘The sou’east has taken hold,’ announced
the elder Chapdelaine ‘Now we can say that
the winter is practically over.’

Everyone had his own way of expressing re¬
lief and delight; but it was Maria who stood
longest by the door, hearkening to the sweet
patter of the rain, watching the indistinct
movement of cloud in the dark sky above the

50

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

darker mass of the forest, breathing the mild
air that came from the south.

‘Spring is not far . . . Spring is not
far . .

In her heart she felt that never since the earth
began was there a springtime like this spring¬
time to-be.

CHAPTER III.

One morning three days later, on opening the
door, Maria’s ear caught a sound that made
her stand motionless and listening. The dis¬
tant and continuous thunder was the voice of
wild waters, silenced all winter by the frost.

‘The ice is going out,’ she announced to
those within. ‘You can hear the falls.’

This set them, all talking once again of the
opening season, and of the work soon to be
commenced. The month of May came in with
alternate warm rains and fine sunny days
which gradually conquered the accumulated
ice and snow of the long winter. Low stumps
and roots were beginning to appear, although
the shade of close-set cypress and fir prolonged
the death-struggle of the perishing snow-drifts ;
the roads became quagmires ; wherever the
brown mosses were uncovered they were full of
5Ï

52

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

water as a sponge. In other lands it was al¬
ready spring ; vigorously the sap was running,
buds were bursting and presently leaves would
unfold; but the soil of far northern Can¬
ada must be rid of one chill and heavy mantle
before clothing itself afresh in green.

A dozen times in the course of the day Maria
and her mother opened the window to feel the
softness of the air, listen to the tinkle of water
running from the last drifts on higher slopes,
or hearken to the mighty roar telling that the
exulting Peribonka was free, and hurrying to
the lake a freight of ice-floes from the remote
north.

Chapdelaine seated himself that evening on
the door-step for his smoke ; a stirring of mem¬
ory brought the remark : ‘F rançois will soon
be passing. He said that perhaps he would come
to see us.’ Maria replied with a scarce audible
‘Yes,’ and blessed the shadow hiding her face.

Ten days later he came, long after nightfall.
The women were alone in the house with Tit’-
Bé and the children, the father having gone for
seed-grain to Honfleur whence he would only
return on the morrow. Telesphore and Alma

A TRANSLATION

S3

Rose were asleep, TiLBé was having a last pipe
before the family prayer, when Chien barked
several times and got up to sniff at the closed
door. Then two light taps were heard. The
visitor waited for the invitation before he en¬
tered and stood before them.

His excuses for so late a call were made with¬
out touch of awkwardness. ‘We are camped
at the end of the portage above the rapids. The
tent had to be pitched and things put in order
to make the Belgians comfortable for the night.
When I set out I knew it was hardly the hour
for a call and that the paths through the woods
must be pretty bad. But Î started all the same,
and when I saw your light . . .’

His high Indian boots were caked with mud
to the knee; he breathed a little deeply be¬
tween words, like a man who has been running;
but his keen eyes were quietly confident.

‘Only Tit’Bé has changed,’ said he. ‘When
you left Mistassini he was but so high . . . ’
With a hand he indicated the stature of a child.
Mother Chapdelaine’s face v/as bright with in¬
terest; doubly pleased to receive a visitor and
at the chance of talking about old times.

54

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘Nor have you altered in these seven years ;
not a bit ; as for Maria . . . surely you find a
difference!’

He gazed at Maria with something of wonder
in his eyes* ‘You see that . . . that I saw
her the other day at Peribonka.’ Tone and
manner showed that the meeting of a fortnight
ago had been allowed to blot the remoter days
from his recollection. But since the talk was of
her he ventured an appraising glance.

Her young vigour and health, the beautiful
heavy hair and sunburnt neck of a country girl,
the frank honesty of eye and gesture, all these
things, thought he, were possessions of the child
of seven years ago ; and twice or thrice he shook
his head as though to say that, in truth, she had
not changed. But the consciousness too was
there that he, if not she, had changed, for the
sight of her before him took strange hold upon
his heart.

Maria’s smile was a little timid, but soon she
dared to raise her eyes and look at him in turn.
Assuredly a handsome fellow; comely of body,
revealing so much of supple strength; comely
of face in well-cut feature and fearless eye . . .

A TRANSLATION

5S

To herself she said with some surprise that she
had not thought him thus — more forward per¬
haps, talking freely and rather positively — but
now he scarcely spoke at all and everything
about him had an air of perfect simplicity.
Doubtless it was his expression that had given
her this idea, and his bold straightforward
manner.

Mother Chapdelaine took up her question¬
ing: — ‘And so you sold your farm when your
father died, François?’

‘Yes, I sold everything. I was never a very
good hand at farming, you know. Working
in the shanties, trapping, making a little money
from time to time as a guide or in trade with
the Indians, that is the life for me, but to
scratch away at the same fields from one year’s
end to another, and stay there forever, I would
not have been able to stick to that all my life ;
I would have felt like a cow tethered to a
stake.’

‘That is so, some men are made that way.
Samuel, for example, and you, and many an¬
other. It seems as if the woods had some magic
for you . . .’ She shook her head and looked

56

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

at him in wonderment. ‘Frozen in winter, de¬
voured by flies in summer ; living in a tent on
the snow, or in a log cabin full of chinks that
the wind blows through, you like that better
than spending your life on a good farm, near
shops and houses. Just think of it; a nice bit
of level land without a stump or a hollow, a
good warm house all papered inside, fat cattle
pasturing or in the stable; for people well
stocked with implements and who keep their
health, is there anything better or happier?’

François Paradis looked at the floor without
making answer, perhaps a trifle ashamed of
these wrong-headed tastes of his. ‘A fine life
for those who are fond of the land,’ he said
at last, ‘but I should never have been content.’

It was the everlasting conflict between the
types: pioneer and farmer, the peasant from
France who brought to new lands his ideals of
ordered life and contented immobility, and that
other in whom the vast wilderness awakened
distant atavistic instincts for wandering and
adventure.

Accustomed for fifteen years to hear her
mother vaunting the idyllic happiness of the

A TRANSLATION

57

farmer in the older settlements, Maria had
very naturally come to believe that she was of
the same mind ; now she was no longer certain
about it. But whoever was right she well knew
that not one of the well-to-do young fellows
at St. Prime, with his Sunday coat of fine
cloth and his fur collar, was the equal of Fran¬
çois Paradis in muddy boots and faded woollen
jersey.

Replying to further questions he spoke of his
journeys on the North Shore and to the head¬
waters of the rivers — of it all very naturally
and with a shade of hesitation, scarcely know¬
ing what to tell and what to leave out, for the
people he was speaking to lived in much the
same kind of country and their manner of life
was little different.

^Up there the winters are harder yet than
here, and still longer. We have only dogs to
draw our sleds, fine strong dogs, but bad-tem¬
pered and often half wild, and we feed them
but once a day, in the evening, on frozen fish.

. . .Yes, there are settlements, but almost
no farming; the men live by trapping and fish¬
ing . . . No, I never had any difficulty

58

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

with the Indians; I always got on very well
with them. I know nearly all those on the
Mistassini and this river, for they used to come
to our place before my father died. You see
he often went trapping in winter when he was
not in the shanties, and one season when he
was at the head of the Rivière aux Foins, quite
alone, a tree that he was cutting for firewood
slipped in falling, and it was the Indians who
found him by chance next day, crushed and
half-frozen though the weather was mild.
He was in their game preserve, and they might
very well have pretended not to see him and
have left him to die there ; but they put him on
their toboggan, brought him to their camp,
and looked after him. You knew my father:
a rough man who often took a glass, but just
in his dealings, and with a good name for do¬
ing that sort of thing himself. So when he
parted with these Indians he told them to stop
and see him in the spring when they would be
coming down to Pointe Bleue with their
furs: — ‘François Paradis of Mistassini,’ said
he to them, ‘will not forget what you have
done . . . François Paradis.’ And when they
came in spring while running the river he

A TRANSLATION

59

looked after them well and every one carried
away a new ax, a fine woollen blanket and to¬
bacco for six months. Always after that they
used to pay us a visit in the spring, and father
had the choice of their best skins for less than
the companies’ buyers had to pay. When he
died they treated me in the same way because
I was his son and bore the same name, Fran¬
çois Paradis. With more capital I could have
made a good bit of money in this trade — a
good bit of money.’

He seemed a little uncomfortable at having
talked so much, and arose to go. We shall
be coming down in a few weeks, and I will try
to stay a little longer,’ he said as he departed.
‘It is good to see you again.’

On the door-step his keen eyes sought in
Maria’s for something that he might carry into
the depth of the green woods whither he was
bent; but they found no message. In her
maidenly simplicity she feared to show herself
too bold, and very resolutely she kept her
glance lowered, like the young girls with richer
parents who return from the convents in Chi¬
coutimi trained to look on the world with a
superhuman demureness.

60

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Scarcely was François gone when the two
women and Tit’Bé knelt for the evening
prayer. The mother led in a high voice, speak¬
ing very rapidly, the others answering in a low
murmur. Five Paters, five Aves, the Acts,
and then a long responsive Litany.

‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us
now and at the hour of our death . .

‘Immaculate heart of Jesus, have pity on
us . . .’

The window was open and through it came
the distant roaring of the falls. The first
mosquitos of the spring, attracted by the light,
entered likewise and the slender music of their
wings filled the house. Tit’Bé went and closed
the window, then fell on his knees again beside
the others.

‘Great St. Joseph, pray for us . . .’

‘St. Isidore, pray for us . . .’

The prayers over, Mother Chapdelaine
sighed out contentedly: ‘How pleasant it is to
have a caller, when we see hardly anyone but
Eutrope Gagnon from year’s end to year’s
end. But that is what comes of living so far
away in the woods . . . Now, when I was

A TRANSLATION

61

a girl at St. Gedeon, the house was full of vis¬
itors nearly every Saturday evening and all
Sunday. Adelard Saint-Onge who courted me
for such a long time; Wilfrid Tremblay, the
merchant, who had nice manners and was
always trying to speak as the F rench do ; many
others as well — not counting your father who
came to see us almost every night for three
years, while I was making up my mind . .

Three years ! Maria thought to herself that
she had only seen François Paradis twice since
she was a child, and she felt ashamed at the
beating of her heart.

CHAPTER IV.

After a few chilly days, June suddenly
brought veritable spring weather. A blazing
sun warmed field and forest, the lingering
patches of snow vanished even in the deep shade
of the woods ; the Peribonka rose and rose be¬
tween its rocky banks until the alders and the
roots of the nearer spruces were drowned; in
the roads the mud was incredibly deep. The
Canadian soil rid itself of the last traces of
winter with a semblance of mad haste, as
though in dread of another winter already on
the way.

Esdras and Da’Bé returned from the shan¬
ties where they had worked all the winter.
Esdras was the eldest of the family, a tall
fellow with a huge frame, his face bronzed,
his hair black; the low forehead and promin¬
ent chin gave him a Neronian profile, domin-
62

A TRANSLATION

63

eering, not without a suggestion of brutality;
but he spoke softly, measuring his words, and
was endlessly patient. In face alone had he
anything of the tyrant; it was as though the
long rigours of the climate and the fine sense
and good humour of the race had refined his
heart to a simplicity and kindliness that his
formidable aspect seemed to deny.

Da’Bé, also tall, was less heavily built and
more lively and merry. He was like his father.

The married couple had given their first chil¬
dren, Esdras and Maria, fine, high-sounding,
sonorous names ; but they had apparently
wearied of these solemnities, for the next two
children never heard their real names pro¬
nounced: always had they been called by the
affectionate diminutives of childhood, Da’Bé
and Tit’Bé. With the last pair, however, there
had been a return to the earlier ceremonious
manner: — Telesphore . . . Alma Rose.

‘When the boys get back we are going to
make land,’ the father had promised. And,
with the help of Edwige Légaré, their hired
man, they set about the task.

In the Province of Quebec there is much un-

64

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

certainty in the spelling and the use of names.
A scattered people in a huge half-wild country,
unlettered for the most part and with no one
to turn to for counsel but the priests, is apt to
pay attention only to the sound of names, car¬
ing nothing about their appearance when
written or the sex to which they pertain. Pro¬
nunciation has naturally varied in one mouth
or another, in this family or that, and when
a formal occasion calls for writing, each takes
leave to spell his baptismal name in his own
way, without a passing thought that there may
may be a canonical form. Borrowings from
other languages have added to the uncertain¬
ties of orthography and gender. Individuals
sign indifferently, Denise, Denije or Deneije;
Conrad or Courade; men bear such names as
Hermenegilde, Aglaë, Edwige.

Edwige Légaré had worked for the Chap-
delaines these eleven summers. That is to say,
for wages of twenty dollars a month he was
in harness each day from four in the morning
till nine at night at any and every job that
called for doing, bringing to it a sort of fren¬
zied and inexhaustible enthusiasm, for he was

A TRANSLATION

65

one of those men incapable by his nature of
working save at the full pitch of strength and
energy, in a series of berserk rages. Short
and broad, his eyes were the brightest blue
— a thing rare in Quebec — at once piercing and
guileless, set in a visage the colour of clay
that always showed cruel traces of the razor,
topped by hair of nearly the same shade. With
a pride in his appearance that was hard to
justify he shaved himself two or three times a
week, always in the evening, before the bit of
looking-glass that hung over the pump, and by
the feeble light of the little lamp — driving the
steel through his stiff beard with groans that
showed what it cost him in labour and anguish.
Clad in shirt and trousers of brownish home-
spun, wearing huge dusty boots, he was from
head to heel of a piece with the soil, nor was
there aught in his face to redeem the impression
of rustic uncouthness.

Chapdelaine, his three sons and man, pro¬
ceeded then to ‘make land.’ The forest still
pressed hard upon the buildings they had put
up a few years earlier : the little square house,
the barn of planks that gaped apart, the stable

66

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

built of blackened logs and chinked with rags
and earth. Between the scanty fields of their
clearing and the darkly encircling woods lay
a broad stretch which the ax had but half¬
heartedly attacked. A few living trees had
been cut for timber, and the dead ones, sawn
and split, fed the great stove for a whole win¬
ter ; but the place was a rough tangle of stumps
and interlacing roots, of fallen trees too far
rotted to burn, of others dead but still erect
amid the alder scrub.

Thither the five men made their way one
morning and set to work at once, without a
word, for every man’s task had been settled
beforehand.

The father and Da’Bé took their stand face
to face on either side of a tree, and their axes,
helved with birch, began to swing in rhythm.
At first each hewed a deep notch, chopping
steadily at the same spot for some seconds,
then the ax rose swiftly and fell obliquely on
the trunk a foot higher up; at every stroke a
great chip flew, thick as the hand, splitting
away with the grain. When the cuts were
nearly meeting, one stopped and the other

A TRANSLATION

67

slowed down, leaving his ax in the wood for
a moment at every blow; the mere strip, by
some miracle still holding the tree erect,
yielded at last, it began to lean and the two ax-
men stepped back a pace and watched it fall,
shouting at the same instant a warning of the
danger.

It was then the turn of Edwige Légaré and
Esdras ; when the tree was not too heavy each
took an end, clasping their strong hands be¬
neath the trunk, and then raised themselves —
backs straining, arms cracking under the stress
— and carried it to the nearest heap with short
unsteady steps, getting over the fallen trees with
stumbling effort. When the burden seemed too
heavy, Tit’Bé came forward leading Charles
Eugene dragging a tug-bar with a strong
chain; this was passed round the trunk and
fastened, the horse bent his back, and with the
muscles of his hindquarters standing out,
hauled away the tree which scraped along the
stumps and crushed the young alders to the
ground.

At noon Maria came out to the door-step and
gave a long call to tell them that dinner was

68

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

ready. Slowly they straightened up among the
stumps, wiping away with the backs of their
hands the drops of sweat that ran into their
eyes, and made their way to the house.

Already the pea-soup smoked in the plates.
The five men set themselves at table without
haste, as if sensation were somewhat dulled by
the heavy work; but as they caught their
breath a great hunger awoke, and soon they be¬
gan to eat with keen appetite. The two women
waited upon them, filling the empty plates, car¬
rying about the great dish of pork and boiled
potatoes, pouring out the hot tea. When the
meat had vanished the diners filled their
saucers with molasses in which they soaked
large pieces oi bread ; hunger was quickly ap¬
peased, because they had eaten fast and with¬
out a word, and then plates were pushed back
and chairs tilted with sighs of satisfaction,
while hands were thrust into pockets for their
pipes, and the pigs’ bladders bulging with to¬
bacco.

Edwige Légaré, seating himself on the door¬
step, proclaimed two or three times : — T have
dined well ... I have dined well . . .’

A TRANSLATION

69

with the air of a judge who renders an impar¬
tial decision ; after which he leaned against the
post, and let the smoke of his pipe and the gaze
of his small light-coloured eyes pursue the same
purposeless wanderings. The elder Chapde-
laine sank deeper and deeper into his chair,
and ended by falling asleep ; the others smoked
and chatted about their work.

Tf there is anything,’ said the mother,
‘which could reconcile me to living so far away
in the woods, it is seeing my men-folk make a
nice bit of land — a nice bit of land that was full
of trees and stumps and roots, which one be¬
holds in a fortnight as bare as the back of your
hand, ready for the plough; surely nothing in
the world can be more pleasing or better worth
doing.’ The rest gave assent with nods, and
were silent for a while, admiring the picture.
Soon however Chapdelaine awoke, refreshed
by his sleep and ready for work ; then all arose
and went out together.

The place where they had worked in the
morning was still full of stumps and overgrown
with alders. They set themselves to cutting
and uprooting the alders, gathering a sheaf of

70

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

branches in the hand and severing them with
the ax, or sometimes digging the earth away
about the roots and tearing up the whole bush
together. The alders disposed of, there re¬
mained the stumps.

Légaré and Esdras attacked the smaller ones
with no weapons but their axes and stout
wooden prizes. They first cut the roots spread¬
ing on the surface, then drove a lever well
home, and, chests against the bar, threw all
their weight upon it. When their efforts could
not break the hundred ties binding the tree to
the soil, Légaré continued to bear heavily that
he might raise the stump a little, and while
he groaned and grunted under the strain Es¬
dras hewed away furiously level with the
ground, severing one by one the remaining
roots.

A little distance away the other three men
handled the stumping-machine with the aid of
Charles Eugene. The pyramidal scaffolding
was put in place above a large stump and low¬
ered, the chains which were then attached to
the root passed over a pulley, and the horse at
the other end started away quickly, flinging

A TRANSLATION

71

himself against the traces and showering
earth with his hoofs. A short and desperate
charge, a mad leap often arrested after a few
feet as by the stroke of a giant fist; then the
heavy steel blades would swing up anew,
gleaming in the sun, and fall with a dull sound
upon the stubborn wood, while the horse took
breath for a moment, awaiting with excited eye
the word that would launch him forward again.
And afterwards there was still the labour of
hauling or rolling the big stumps to the pile —
at fresh effort of back, of soil-stained hands
with swollen veins, and stiffened arms that
seemed grotesquely striving with the heavy
trunk and the huge twisted roots.

The sun dipped toward the horizon, disap¬
peared; the sky took on softer hues above the
forest’s dark edge, and the hour of supper
brought to the house five men of the colour of
the soil.

While waiting upon them Madame Chap-
delaine asked a hundred questions about the
day’s work, and when the vision arose before
her of this patch of land they had cleared, su¬
perbly bare, lying ready for the plough, her

72

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

spirit was possessed with something of a
mystic’s rapture.

With hands upon her hips, refusing to seat
herself at table, she extolled the beauty of the
world as it existed for her: not the beauty
wherein human beings have no hand, which
the townsman makes such an ado about with
his unreal ecstasies — mountains lofty and bare,
wild seas — but the quiet unaffected loveliness
of the level champaign, finding its charm in the
regularity of the long furrow and the sweetly-
flowing stream — the naked champaign court¬
ing with willing abandon the fervent embraces
of the sun.

She sang the great deeds of the four Chap-
delaines and Edwige Légaré, their struggle
against the savagery of nature, their triumph
of the day. She awarded praises and displayed
her own proper pride, albeit the five men
smoked their wooden or clay pipes in silence,
motionless as images after their long task; im¬
ages of earthy hue, hollow-eyed with fatigue.

‘The stumps are hard to get out,’ at length
said the elder Chapdelaine, ‘the roots have not
rotted in the earth so much as I should have

A TRANSLATION

73

imagined. I calculate that we shall not be
through for three weeks.’ He glanced ques-
tioningly at Légaré who gravely confirmed
him.

‘Three weeks ... Yes, confound it!
That is what I think too.’

They fell silent again, patient and deter¬
mined, like men who face a long war.

The Canadian spring had but known a few
weeks of life when, by calendar, the summer
was already come; it seemed as if the local
weather god had incontinently pushed the
season forward with august finger to bring it
again into accord with more favoured lands to
the south. For torrid heat fell suddenly upon
them, heat well-nigh as unmeasured as was
the winter’s cold. The tops of the spruces and
cypresses, forgotten by the wind, were utterly
still, and above the frowning outline stretched
a sky bare of cloud which likewise seemed fixed
and motionless. From dawn till nightfall a
merciless sun calcined the ground.

The five men worked on unceasingly, while
from day to day the clearing extended its bor¬
ders by a little ; deep wounds in the uncovered
soil showed the richness of it.

74

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Maria went forth one morning to carry them
water. The father and TiEBé were cutting
alders, Da’Bé and Esdras piled the cut trees.
Edwige Légaré was attacking a stump by him¬
self ; a hand against the trunk, he had grasped
a root with the other as one seizes the leg of
some gigantic adversary in a struggle, and he
was fighting the combined forces of wood and
earth like a man furious at the resistance of an
enemy. Suddenly the stump yielded and lay
upon the ground; he passed a hand over his
forehead and sat down upon a root, running
with sweat, overcome by the exertion. When
Maria came near him with her pail half full of
water, the others having drunk, he was still
seated, breathing deeply and saying in a bewil¬
dered way: — T am done for . . . Ah! I am
done for.’ But he pulled himself together on
seeing her, and roared out: — ‘Cold water!
Perdition ! Give me cold water.’

Seizing the bucket he drank half its contents
and poured the rest over his head and neck;
still dripping, he threw himself afresh upon the
vanquished stump and began to roll it towards
a pile as one carries off a prize.

A TRANSLATION

75

Maria stayed for a few moments looking at
the work of the men and the progress they had
made, each day more evident, then hied her
back to the house swinging the empty bucket,
happy to feel herself alive and well under the
bright sun, dreaming of all the joys that were
to be hers, nor could be long delayed if only she
were earnest and patient enough in her prayers.

Even at a distance the voices of the men
came to her across the surface of the ground
baked by the heat ; Esdras, his hands beneath a
young jack pine, was saying in his quiet
tones: — ‘Gently . . . together now !’

Légaré was wrestling with some new inert
foe, and swearing in his half-stifled way : — ‘Per¬
dition ! I’ll make you stir, so I will.’ His gasps
were nearly as audible as the words. Taking
breath for a second he rushed once more into
the fray, arms straining, wrenching with his
great back. And yet again his voice was raised
in oaths and lamentations : — ‘I tell you that I’ll
have you . . . Oh you rascal! Isn’t it
hot.? . . . I’m pretty nearly finished. . . ’
His complaints ripened into one mighty cry: —
‘Boss! We are going to kill ourselves making
land.’

76

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Old Chapdelaine’s voice was husky but still
cheerful as he answered: ‘Tough! Edwige,
tough ! The pea-soup will soon be ready.’

And in truth it was not long before Maria,
once more on the door-step, shaping her hands
to carry the sound, sent forth the ringing call
to dinner.

Toward evening a breeze arose and a deli¬
cious coolness fell upon the earth like a pardon.
But the sky remained cloudless.

‘If the fine weather lasts,’ said Mother Chap-
delaine, ‘the blueberries will be ripe for the
feast of Ste. Anne.’

CHAPTER V

The fine weather continued, and early in Ju¬
ly the blueberries were ripe.

Where the fire had passed, on rocky slopes,
wherever the woods were thin and the sun
could penetrate, the ground had been clad in
almost unbroken pink by the laurel’s myriad
tufts of bloom; at first the reddening blue¬
berries contended with them in glowing colour,
but under the constant sun these slowly turned
to pale blue, to royal blue, to deepest purple,
and when July brought the feast of Ste. Anne
the bushes laden with fruit were broad patches
of violet amid the rosy masses now beginning
to fade.

The forests of Quebec are rich in wild ber¬
ries ; cranberries, Indian pears, black currants,
sarsaparilla spring up freely in the wake of the
great fires, but the blueberry, the bilberry or
77

78

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

whortleberry of F rance, is of all the most abun¬
dant and delicious. The gathering of them,
from July to September, is an industry for
many families who spend the whole day in the
woods ; strings of children down to the tiniest
go swinging their tin pails, empty in the morn¬
ing, full and heavy by evening. Others only
gather the blueberries for their own use, either
to make jam or the famous pies national to
French Canada.

Two or three times in the very beginning of
July Maria, with Telesphore and Alma Rose,
went to pick blueberries ; but their day had not
come, and the gleanings barely sufficed for a
few tarts of proportions to excite a smile.

‘On the feast of Ste. Anne,’ said their mo¬
ther by way of consolation, ‘we shall all go a-
gathering ; the men as well, and whoever fails
to bring back a full pail is not to have any.’

But Saturday, the eve of Ste. Anne’s day,
was memorable to the Chapdelaines ; an even¬
ing of company such as their house in the for¬
est had never seen.

When the men returned from work Eutrope
Gagnon was already there. He had supped.

A TRANSLATION

79

he said, and while the others were at their meal
he sat by the door in the cooler air that entered,
balancing his chair on two legs. The pipes go¬
ing, talk naturally turned towards the labours
of the soil, and the care of stock.

With five men,’ said Eutrope, ‘you have a
good bit of land to show in a short while. But
working alone, as I do, without a horse to draw
the heavy logs, one makes poor headway and
has a hard time of it. However you are always
getting on, getting on.’

Madame Chapdelaine, liking him, and feel¬
ing a great sympathy for his solitary labour in
this worthy cause, gave him a few words of en¬
couragement. ‘You don’t make very quick
progress by yourself, that is true enough, but a
man lives on very little when he is alone, and
then your brother Egide will be coming back
from the drive with two or three hundred dol¬
lars at least, in time for the haymaking and the
harvest, and, if you both stay here next winter,
in less than two years you will have a good
farm.’

Assenting with a nod, his glance found
Maria, as though drawn thither by the thought

80

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

that in two years, fortune favouring, he might
hope . . .

‘How does the drive go?’ asked Esdras.
‘Is there any news from that quarter?’

‘I had word through Ferdina Farouche, a
son of Thadée Farouche of Honfleur, who got
back from Fa Tuque last month. He said that
things were going well ; the men were not hav¬
ing too bad a time.’

The shanties, the drive, these are the two
chief heads of the great lumbering industry,
even of greater importance for the Province of
Quebec than is farming. From October till
April the axes never cease falling, while sturdy
horses draw the logs over the snow to the banks
of the frozen rivers ; and, when spring comes,
the piles melt one after another into the rising
waters and begin their long adventurous jour¬
ney through the rapids. At every abrupt turn,
at every fall, where logs jam and pile, must be
found the strong and nimble river-drivers,
practised at the dangerous work, at making
their way across the floating timber, breaking
the jams, aiding with ax and pike-pole the free
descent of this moving forest.

A TRANSLATION

81

‘A hard time !’ exclaimed Légaré with scorn.
‘The young fellows of to-day don’t know the
meaning of the words. After three months in
the woods they are in a hurry to get home and
buy yellow boots, stiff hats and cigarettes, and
to go and see their girls. Even in the shanties,
as things are now, they are as well fed as in a
hotel, with meat and potatoes all winter long.
Now, thirty years ago . . .’

He broke off for a moment, expressing with
a shake of his head those prodigious changes
that the years had wrought.

‘Thirty years ago, when the railway from
Quebec was built, I was there ; that was some¬
thing like hardship, I can tell you ! I was only
sixteen years of age but I chopped with the rest
of them to clear the right of way, always
twenty-five miles ahead of the steel, and for
fourteen months I never clapped eye on a
house. We had no tents, summer or winter,
only shelters of boughs that we made for our¬
selves, and from morning till night it was chop,
chop, chop, — eaten by the flies, and in the
course of the same day soaked with rain and
roasted by the sun.’

82

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘Every Monday morning they opened a sack
of flour and we made ourselves a bucketful of
pancakes, and all the rest of the week, three
times a day, one dug into that pail for some¬
thing to eat. By Wednesday, no longer any
pancakes, because they were all stuck together ;
nothing there but a mass of dough. One cut
off a big chunk of dough with one’s knife, put
that in his belly, and then chopped and chopped
again !’

‘When we got to Chicoutimi where provi¬
sions could reach us by water we were worse
off than Indians, pretty nearly naked, all
scratched and torn, and I well remember some
who began to cry when told they could go
home, because they thought they would find
all their people dead, so long had the time
seemed to them. Hardship! That was hard¬
ship if you like.’

‘That is so,’ said Chapdelaine, ‘I can recall
those days. Not a single house on the north
side of the Lake : no one but Indians and a few
trappers who made their way up here in sum¬
mer by canoe and in winter with dog-sleds,
much as it is now in the Labrador.’

A TRANSLATION

83

The young folk were listening keenly to these
tales of former times. ‘And now,’ said Es-
dras, ‘here we are fifteen miles beyond the
Lake, and when the Roberval boat is running
we can get to the railway in twelve hours.’

They meditated upon this for a while with¬
out a word, contrasting past and present; the
cruel harshness of life as once it was, the easy
day’s journey now separating them from the
marvels of the iron way, and the thought of it
filled them with naïve wonder.

All at once Chien set up a low growl; the
sound was heard of approaching footsteps.
‘Another visitor!’ Madame Chapdelaine an¬
nounced in a tone mingling pleasure and
astonishment.

Maria also arose, agitated, smoothing her
hair with unconscious hand; but it was Eph-
rem Surprenant of Honfleur who opened the
door.

‘We have come to pay you a visit!’ He
shouted this with the air of one who announces
a great piece of news. Behind him was some¬
one unknown to them, who bowed and smiled
in a very mannerly way.

84

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘My nephew Lorenzo/ was Ephrem Surpre¬
nantes introduction, ‘a son of my brother
Elzéar who died last autumn. You never met
him, it is a long time since he left this country
for the States.’

They were quick to find a chair for the
young man from the States, and the uncle un¬
dertook the duty of establishing the nephew’s
genealogy on both sides of the house, and of
setting forth his age, trade and the particulars
of his life, in obedience to the Canadian cus¬
tom. ‘Yes, a son of my brother Elzéar who
married a young Bourglouis of Kiskisink.
You should be able to recall that, Madame
Chapdelaine?’

From the depths of her memory mother
Chapdelaine unearthed a number of Surpre¬
nants and as many Bourglouis, and gave the
list with their baptismal names, successive
places of residence and a full record of their
alliances.

‘Right. Precisely right. Well, this one
here is Lorenzo. He has been in the States for
many years, working in a factory.’

Frankly interested, everyone took another

A TRANSLATION

85

good look at Lorenzo Surprenant. His face
was rounded, with well-cut features, eyes gen¬
tle and unwavering, hands white ; with his head
a little on one side he smiled amiably, neither
superior nor embarrassed under this concen¬
trated gaze.

‘He came here,’ continued his uncle, ‘to
settle affairs after the death of Elzéar, and to
try to sell the farm.’

‘He has no wish to hold on to the land and
cultivate it.?’ questioned the elder Chapde-
laine.

Lorenzo Surprenant’s smile broadened and
he shook his head. ‘No, the idea of settling
down on the farm does not tempt me, not in
the least. I earn good wages where I am and
like the place very well; I am used to the
work.’

He checked himself, but it was plain that
after the kind of life he had been living and
what he had seen of the world, existence on a
farm between a humble little village and the
forest seemed a thing insupportable.

‘When I was a girl,’ said mother Chapde-
laine, ‘pretty nearly everyone went off to the

86

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

States. Farming did not pay as well as it does
now, prices were low, we were always hearing
of the big wages earned over there in the fac¬
tories, and every year one family after another
sold out for next to nothing and left Canada.
Some made a lot of money, no doubt of that,
especially those families with plenty of daugh¬
ters ; but now it is different and they are not
going as once they did ... So you are selling
the farm?’

‘Yes, there has been some talk with three
Frenchmen who came to Mistook last month.
I expect we shall make a bargain.’

‘And are there many Canadians where you
are living ? Do the people speak F rench ?’

‘At the place I went to first, in the State of
Maine, there were more Canadians than Amer¬
icans or Irish; everyone spoke French; but
where I live now, in the State of Massachu¬
setts, there are not so many. A few families
however; we call on one another in the even¬
ings.’

‘Samuel once thought of going West,’ said
Madame Chapdelaine, ‘but I was never will¬
ing. Among people speaking nothing but

A TRANSLATION

87

English I should have been unhappy all the
rest of my days. I used to say to him: —
“Samuel, we Canadians are always better off
among Canadians.” ’

When the French Canadian speaks of him¬
self it is invariably and simply as a ‘Canad¬
ian’ ; whereas for all the other races that
followed in his footsteps, and peopled the
country across to the Pacific, he keeps the
name of origin: English, Irish, Polish, Russ¬
ian; never admitting for a moment that the
children of these, albeit born in the country,
have an equal title to be called ‘Canadians ’.
Quite naturally, and without thought of offend¬
ing, he appropriates the name won in the heroic
days of his forefathers.

‘And is it a large town where you are?’

‘Ninety thousand,’ said Lorenzo with a
little affectation of modesty.

‘Ninety thousand! Bigger than Quebec!’

‘Yes, and we are only an hour by train from
Boston. A really big place, that.’

And he set himself to telling of the great
American cities and their magnificence, of the
life filled with ease and plenty, abounding in

88

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

refinements beyond imagination, which is the
portion of the well paid artisan.

In silence they listened to his words.
Framed in the open door-way the last crimson
of the sky, fading to paler tints, rose above the
vague masses of the forest, — a column resting
upon its base. The mosquitos began to arrive
in their legions, and the humming of innum¬
erable wings filled the clearing with low
continuous sound.

‘Telesphore,’ directed the father, ‘make us
a smudge. Take the old tin pail.’ Teles-
phore covered the bottom of the leaky vessel
with earth, filling it then with dry chips and
twigs which he set ablaze. When the flame
was leaping up brightly he returned with an
armful of herbs and leaves and smothered it;
the volume of stinging smoke which ascended
was carried by the wind into the house and
drove out the countless horde. At length they
were at peace, and with sighs of relief could
desist from the warfare. The very last mos¬
quito settled on the face of little Alma Rose.
With great seriousness she pronounced the rit¬
ual words : — 'Tly, fly, get off my face, my nose

A TRANSLATION

89

is not a public place !’ Then she made a swift
end of the creature with a slap. The smoke
drifted obliquely through the door-way ; within
the house, no longer stirred by the breeze, it
spread in a thin cloud ; the walls became indis¬
tinct and far-off ; the group seated between door
and stove resolved into a circle of dim faces
hanging in a white haze.

‘Greetings to everyone!’ The tones rang
clear, and François Paradis, emerging from the
smoke, stood upon the threshold. For weeks
Maria had been expecting him. Half an hour
earlier the sound of a step without had sent the
blood to her cheek, and yet the arrival of him
she awaited moved her with joyous surprise.

‘Offer your chair, Da’Bél’ cried mother
Chapdelaine. Four callers from three differ¬
ent quarters converging upon her, truly nothing
more was needed to fill her with delightful ex¬
citement. An evening indeed to be remem¬
bered !

‘There ! You are forever saying that we are
lost in the woods and see no company,’ tri¬
umphed her husband. ‘Count them over:
eleven grown-up people I’ Every chair in the

90

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

house was filled; Esdras, Tit’Bé and Eutrope
Gagnon occupied the bench, Chapdelaine, a box
turned upside down; from the step Telesphore
and Alma Rose watched the mounting smoke.

And look/ said Ephrem Surprenant, ‘how
many young fellows and only one girl !’ The
young men were duly counted : three Chapde-
laines, Eutrope Gagnon, Lorenzo Surprenant,
François Paradis. As for the one girl . . .
Every eye was turned upon Maria, who smiled
feebly and looked down, confused.

‘Had you a good trip, François.^ — He went
up the river with strangers to buy furs from the
Indians,’ explained Chapdelaine; who pre¬
sented to the others with formality — ‘François
Paradis, son of François Paradis from St.
Michel de Mistassini.’ Eutrope Gagnon knew
him by name, Ephrem Surprenant had met his
father ^ ‘A tall man, taller still than he, of a
strength not to be matched.’ It only remained
to account for Lorenzo Surprenant, — ■' ‘who has
come home from the States’ : — and all the con¬
ventions had been honoured.

‘A good trip,’ answered François. ‘No
not very good. One of the Belgians took a fever

A TRANSLATION

91

and nearly died. After that it was rather late
in the season; many Indian families had al¬
ready gone down to Ste. Anne de Chicoutimi
and could not be found ; and on top of it all a
canoe was wrecked when running a rapid on
the way back, and it was hard work fishing the
pelts out of the river, without mentioning the
fact that one of the bosses was nearly drowned,
— the same one that had the fever. No, we
were unlucky all through. But here we are
none the less, and it is always another job over
and done with.’ A gesture signified to the
listeners that the task was completed, the wages
paid and the ultimate profits or losses not his
affair.

‘Always another job over and done with,’ —
he slowly repeated the:, words. ‘The Belgians
were in a hurry to reach Peribonka on Sunday,
tomorrow ; but, as they had another man, I left
them to finish the journey without me so that I
might spend the evening with you. It does
one good to see a house again.’

His glance strayed contentedly over the mea¬
gre smoke-filled interior and those who peopled
it. In the circle of faces tanned by wind and

92

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

sun, his was the brownest and most weather¬
beaten; his garments showed many rents, one
side of the torn woollen jersey flapped upon his
shoulder, moccasins replaced the long boots he
had worn in the spring. He seemed to have
brought back something of nature’s wildness
from the headwaters of the rivers where the
Indians and the great creatures of the woods
find sanctuary. And Maria, whose life would
not allow her to discern the beauty of that wil¬
derness because it lay too near her, yet felt that
some strange charm was at work and was
throwing its influence about her.

Esdras had gone for the cards ; cards with
faded red backs and dog-eared corners, where
the lost queen of hearts was replaced by a
square of pink cardboard bearing the plainly-
written legend dame de coeur. They played
at quatr e-sept. The two Surprenants, uncle
and nephew, had Madame Chapdelaine and
Maria for partners ; after each game the beaten
couple left the table and gave place to two
other players. Night had fallen; some mos¬
quitos made their way through the open
window and went hither and thither with their
stings and irritating music.

A TRANSLATION

93

‘TelesphoreP called out Esdras, ‘see to the
smudge, the flies are coming in.’ In a few
minutes smoke pervaded the house again,
thick, almost stifling, but greeted with delight.
The party ran its quiet course. An hour of
cards, some talk with a visitor who bears news
from the great world, these are still accounted
happiness in the Province of Quebec.

Between the games, Lorenzo Surprenant
entertained Maria with a description of his
life and his journeyings; in turn asking ques¬
tions about her. He was far from putting on
airs, yet she felt disconcerted at finding so lit¬
tle to say, and her replies were halting and
timid.

The others talked among themselves or
watched the play. Madame recalled the many
gatherings at St. Gedeon in the days of her girl¬
hood, and looked from one to the other, with
unconcealed pleasure at the fact that three
young men should thus assemble beneath her
roof. But Maria sat at the table devoting
herself to the cards, and left it for some vacant
seat near the door with scarcely a glance about
her. Lorenzo Surprenant was always by her

94

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

side and talking ; she felt the continual regard
of Eutrope Gagnon with that familiar look of
patient waiting ; she was conscious of the
handsome bronzed face and fearless eyes of
François Paradis who sat very silent beyond
the door, elbows on his knees.

‘Maria is not at her best this evening,’ said
Madame Chapdelaine by way of excusing her,
‘ she is not really used to having visitors you
see . . Had she but known! . . .

Four hundred miles away, at the far head¬
waters of the rivers, those Indians who have
held aloof from missionaries and traders
are squatting round a fire of dry cypress be¬
fore their lodges, and the world they see about
them, as in the earliest days, is filled with dark
mysterious powers : the giant Wendigo pursu¬
ing the trespassing hunter; strange potions,
carrying death or healing, which wise old men
know how to distil from roots and leaves;
incantations and every magic art. And here
on the fringe of another world, but a day’s
Journey from the railway, in this wooden
house filled with acrid smoke, another all-
conquering spell, charming and bewildering

A TRANSLATION

95

the eyes of three young men, is being woven
into the shifting cloud by a sweet and guileless
maid with downcast eyes.

The hour was late; the visitors departed;
first the two Surprenants, then Eutrope Gag¬
non, only François Paradis was left, — stand¬
ing there and seeming to hesitate.

‘You will sleep here to-night, François?’
asked the father.

His wife heard no reply. ‘Of course!* said
she. ‘And tomorrow we will all gather blue¬
berries. It is the feast of Ste. Anne.’

When a few moments later François moun¬
ted to the loft with the boys, Maria’s heart was
filled with happiness. This seemed to bring
him a little nearer, to draw him within the
family circle.

The morrow was a day of blue sky, a day
when from the heavens some of the sparkle
and brightness descends to earth. The green
of tender grass and young wheat was of a ra¬
vishing delicacy, even the dun woods borrowed
something from the azure of the sky.

François came down in the morning looking
a different man, in clothes borrowed from

96

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Da’Bé and Esdras, and after he had shaved
and washed Madame Chapdelaine compli¬
mented him on his appearance.

When breakfast was over and the hour of
the mass come, all told their chaplet together;
and then the long delightful idle Sunday lay be¬
fore them. But the day’s programme was al¬
ready settled. Eutrope Gagnon came in just
as they were finishing dinner, which was early,
and at once they all set forth, provided with
pails, dishes and tin mugs of every shape and
size.

The blueberries were fully ripe. In the
burnt lands the purple of the clusters and the
green of the leaves now overcame the paling
rose of the laurels. The children began pick¬
ing at once with cries of delight, but their
elders scattered through the woods in search
of the larger patches, where one might sit on
one’s heels and fill a pail in an hour. The
noise of footsteps on dry twigs, of rustling in
the alder bushes, the calls of Telesphore and
Alma Rose to one another, all faded slowly into
the distance, and about each gatherer was only
the buzzing of flies drunk with sunshine, and

A TRANSLATION

97

the voice of the wind in the young birches and
aspens.

‘There is a fine clump over here/ said a
voice. Maria’s heart beat faster as she arose
and went towards F rancois Paradis who «was
kneeling behind the alders. Side by side they
picked industriously for a time, then plunged
farther into the woods, stepping over fallen
trees, looking about them for the deep blue
masses of the ripe berries.

‘There are very few this year,’ said Fran¬
cois. ‘It was the spring frosts that killed the
blossoms.’ He brought to the berry-seeking
his woodsman’s knowledge. ‘In the hollows
and among the alders the snow was lying long¬
er and kept them from freezing.’

They sought again and made some happy
finds : broad clumps of bushes laden with huge
berries which they heaped into their pails. In
the space of an hour these were filled ; they rose
and went to sit on a fallen tree to rest them¬
selves.

Mosquitos swarmed and circled in the
fervent afternoon heat. Every moment the
hand must be raised to scatter them ; after a

98

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

panic-stricken flight they straightway returned,
reckless and pitiless, bent only on finding one
tiny spot to plant a sting; with their sharp
note was blended that of the insatiate black-
fly, filling the woods with unceasing sound.
Living trees there were not many ; a few young
birches, some aspens, alder bushes were stirring
in the wind among the rows of lifeless and
blackened trunks.

François Paradis looked about him as
though to take his bearings. ‘The others can¬
not be far away,’ he said.

‘No,’ replied Maria in a low voice. But
neither he nor she called to summon them.

A squirrel ran down the bole of a dead birch
tree and watched the pair with his sharp eyes
for some moments before venturing to earth.
The strident flight of heavy grasshoppers rose
above the intoxicated clamour of the flies;
a wandering air brought the fall’s dull thunder
through the alders.

François Paradis stole a glance at Maria,
then turned his eyes away and tightly clasped
his hands. Ah, but she was good to look
upon! Thus to sit beside her, to catch

A TRANSLATION

99

these shy glimpses of the strong bosom, the
sweet face so modest and so patient, the utter
simplicity of attitude and of her rare gestures ;
a great hunger for her awoke in him, and with
it a new and marvellous tenderness, for he had
lived his life with other men, in hard give-and-
take, among the wild forests and on the snowy
plains.

Well he knew she was one of those women
who, giving themselves, give wholly, reckoning
not the cost ; love of body and of soul, strength
of arm in the daily task, the unmeasured
devotion of a spirit that does not waver. So
precious the gift appeared to him that he dared
not ask it.

‘I am going down to Grand’Mère next
week,’ he said, almost in a whisper, ‘to work
on the lumber-dam. But I will never take a
glass, not one, Maria !’ Hesitating a moment
he stammered out, eyes on the ground: ‘Per*
haps . . . they have said something against
me?’

‘No.’

‘It is true that I used to drink a bit, when
I got back from the shanties and the drive;

100

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

but that is all over now. You see when a young
fellow has been working in the woods for six
months, with every kind of hardship and no
amusement, and gets out to La Tuque or
Jonquières with all the winter’s wages in his
pocket, pretty often he loses his head; he
throws his money about and sometimes takes
too much . . . But that is all over.’

‘And it is also true that I used to swear.
When one lives all the time with rough men in
the woods or on the rivers one gets the habit.
Once I swore a good deal, and the curé, Mr.
Tremblay, took me to task because I said be¬
fore him that I wasn’t afraid of the devil. But
there is an end of that too, Maria. All the
summer I am to be working for two dollars
and a half a day and you may be sure that I
shall save money. And in the autumn there
will be no trouble finding a job as foreman in
a shanty, with big wages. Next spring I shall
have more than five hundred dollars saved,
clear, and I shall come back. . . .’

Again he hesitated, and the question he was
about to put took another form upon his lips.
‘You will be here still . . . next spring?’
‘Yes.’

A TRANSLATION

101

And after the simple question and simpler
answer they fell silent and so long remained,
wordless and grave, for they had cxchang^'d
their

CHAPTER VL

In July the hay was maturing, and by the
middle of August it was only a question of
awaiting a few dry days to cut and store it. But
after many weeks of fine weather the frequent
shifts of wind which are usual in Quebec once
more ruled the skies.

Every morning the men scanned the heavens
and took counsel together. ‘The wind is back¬
ing to the sou’east. Bad luck! Beyond
question it will rain again,’ said Edwige
Légaré with a gloomy face. Or it was old
Chapdelaine who followed the movement of
the white clouds that rose above the tree-tops,
sailed in glad procession across the clearing,
and disappeared behind the dark spires on the
other side.

Tf the nor’west holds till to-morrow we
shall begin,’ he announces. But next day the
102

A TRANSLATION

103

wind had backed afresh, and the cheerful
clouds of yesterday, now torn and shapeless,
straggling in disorderly rout, seemed to be flee¬
ing like the wreckage of a broken army.

Madame Chapdelaine foretold inevitable
misfortune. ‘Mark rny words, we shall not
have good hay-making weather. They say that
down by the end of the lake some people of
the same parish have gone to law with one
another. Of a certainty the good God does
not like that sort of thing!’

Yet the Power at length was pleased to show
indulgence, and the north-west wind blew for
three days on end, steady and strong, prom¬
ising a rainless week. The scythes were long
since sharpened and ready, and the five men
set to work on the morning of the third
day. Légaré, Esdras and the father cut ; Da’-
Bé and Tit’Bé followed close on their heels, rak¬
ing the hay together. Toward evening all five
took their forks in hand and made it into cocks,
high and carefully built, lest a change of wind
should bring rain. But the sunshine lasted.
For five days they carried on, swinging the
sc>’the steadily from right to left with that

104

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

broad free movement that seems so easy to the
practised hand, and is in truth the hardest to
learn and the most fatiguing of all the labours
known to husbandry.

Flies and mosquitos rose in swarms from the
cut hay, stinging and tormenting the workers ;
a blazing sun scorched their necks, and smart¬
ing sweat ran into their eyes; when evening
came, such was the ache of backs continually
bent, they could not straighten themselves
without making wry faces. Yet they toiled
from dawn to nightfall without loss of a sec¬
ond, hurrying their meals, feeling nothing but
gratitude and happiness that the weather stood
fair.

Three or four times a day Maria or Teles-
phore brought them a bucket of water which
they stood in a shady spot to keep it cool ; and
when throats became unbearably dry with heat,
exertion, and the dust of the hay, they went by
turns to swallow great draughts and deluge
wrists or head.

In five days all the hay was cut, and, the
drought persisting, on the morning of the sixth
day they began to break and scatter the cocks

A TRANSLATION

105

they intended lodging in the barn before night.
The scythes had done their work and the forks
came into play. They threw down the cocks,
spread the hay in the sun, and toward the end
of the afternoon, when dry, heaped it anew in
piles of such a size that a man could just lift
one with a single motion to the level of a well-
filled hay-cart.

Charles Eugene pulled gallantly between the
shafts ; the cart was swallowed up in the barn,
stopped beside the mow, and once again the
forks were plunged into the hard-packed hay,
raised a thick mat of it with strain of wrist and
back, and unloaded it to one side. By the end
of the week the hay, well-dried and of excellent
colour, was all under cover ; the men stretched
themselves and took long breaths, knowing the
fight was over and won.

Tt may rain now if likes,’ said Chapde-
laine. Tt will be all the same to us.’ But it
appeared that the sunshine had not been timed
with exact relation to their peculiar needs, for
the wind held in the north-west and fine days
followed one upon the other in unbroken suc¬
cession.

106

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

The women of the Chapdelaine household
had no part in the work of the fields. The
father and his three tall sons, all strong and
skilled in farm labour, could have managed
everything by themselves ; if they continued to
employ Légaré and to pay him wages it was
because he had entered their service seven
years before, when the children were young,
and they kept him now, partly through habit,
partly because they were loth to lose the help
of so tremendous a worker. During the hay¬
making then, Maria and her mother had only
their usual tasks: housework, cooking, wash¬
ing and mending, the milking of three cows
and the care of the hens, and once a week the
baking which often lasted well into the night.

On the eve of a baking Telesphore was sent
to hunt up the bread-pans which habitually
found their way into all corners of the house
and shed — ^being in daily use to measure oats
for the horse or Indian corn for the fowls, not
to mention twenty other casual purposes they
were continually serving. By the time all were
routed out and scrubbed the dough was rising,
and the women hastened to finish other work
that their evening watch might be shortened.

A TRANSLATION

107

Telesphore made a blazing fire below the
oven with branches of gummy cypress that
smelled of resin, then fed it with tamarack
logs, giving a steady and continuous heat.
When the oven was hot enough, Maria slipped
in the pans of dough ; after which nothing re¬
mained but to tend the fire and change the
position of the pans as the baking required.

Too small an oven had been built five years
before, and ever since then the family did not
escape a weekly discussion about the new oven
it was imperative to construct, which unques¬
tionably should have been put in hand without
delay; but on each trip to the village, by one
piece of bad luck and another, someone forgot
the necessary cement; and so it happened that
the oven had to be filled two or even three times
to make weekly provision for the nine mouths
of the household.

Maria invariably took charge of the first
baking; invariably too, when the oven was
ready for the second batch of bread and the
evening well advanced, her mother would say
considerately: ‘You can go to bed, Maria, I
will look after the second baking.’ And Maria

108

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

would reply never a word, knowing full well
that the mother would presently stretch herself
on the bed for a little nap and not awake till
morning. She then would revive the smudge
that smouldered every evening in the damaged
tin pail, install the second batch of bread, and
seat herself upon the door-step, her chin rest¬
ing in her hands, upheld through the long hours
of the night by her inexhaustible patience.

Twenty paces from the house the clay oven
with its sheltering roof of boards loomed dark,
but the door of the fireplace fitted badly and
one red gleam escaped through the chink; the
dusky border of the forest stole a little closer
in the night. Maria sat very still, delighting in
the quiet and the coolness, while a thousand
vague dreams circled about her like a flock of
wheeling birds.

There was a time when this night-watch
passed in drowsiness, as she resignedly awaited
the moment when the finished task would bring
her sleep; but since the coming of François
Paradis the long weekly vigil was very sweet
to her, for she could think of him and of herself
with nothing to distract her dear imaginings.

A TRANSLATION

109

Simple they were, these thoughts of hers, and
never did they travel far afield. In the spring¬
time he will come back ; his return, there was,
the joy of seeing him again, the words he will
say when they find themselves once more alone,
the first touch of hands and lips. Not easy
was it for Maria to make a picture for herself
of how these things might happen.

Yet she essayed. First she repeated his full
name two or three times, formally, as others
spoke it: François Paradis, from St. Michel
de Mistassini . . . François Paradis . . .
Then suddenly, with sweet intimacy, — Fran¬
çois !

The evocation fails not. He stands before
her, tall and strong, bold of eye, his face
bronzed with sun and snow-glare. He is by her
side, rejoicing at the sight of her, rejoicing that
he has kept his faith, has lived the whole year
discreetly, without drinking or swearing.
There are no blueberries yet to gather — it is
only springtime — yet some good reason they
find for rambling off to the woods; he walks
beside her without word or joining of hands,
through the massed laurel flaming into bios-

110

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

som, and naught beyond does either need to
flush the cheek, to quicken the beating of the
heart.

Now they are seated upon a fallen tree, and
thus he speaks: ‘Were you lonely without me,
Maria Most surely it is the first question
he will put to her ; but she is able to carry the
dream no further, for grief lays a sudden hand
upon her. Ah! dear God! how long will she
have been lonely for him before that moment
comes! A summer to be lived through, an
autumn, and all the endless winter ! She sighs,
but the steadfast patience of the race sustains
her, and her thoughts turn upon herself and
what the future may be holding.

When she was at St. Prime, one of her cou¬
sins who was about to be wedded, spoke often
to her of marriage. A young man from the
village and another from Normandin had both
courted her ; for long months spending the Sun¬
day evenings together at the house.

‘I was fond of them both,’ — thus she de¬
clared to Maria. ‘And I really think I liked
Zotique best; but he went off to the drive on
the St. Maurice, and he wasn’t to be back till

A TRANSLATION

111

summer; then Romeo asked me and I said,
“Yes.” I like him very well, too.’

Maria made no answer, but even then her
heart told her that all marriages are not like
that; now she is very sure. The love of
François Paradis for her, her love for him, is
a thing apart — a thing holy and inevitable —
for she was unable to imagine that between
them it should have befallen otherwise; so
must this love give warmth and unfading col¬
our to every day of the dullest life. Always
had she dim consciousness of such a presence —
moving the spirit like the solemn joy of chant¬
ed masses, the intoxication of a sunny windy
day, the happiness that some unlooked-for
good fortune brings, the certain promise of
abundant harvest . . .

In the stillness of the night the roar of the
fall sounds loud and near; the north-west
wind sways the tops of spruce and fir with a
sweet cool sighing; again and again, further
away and yet further, an owl is hooting; the
chill that ushers in the dawn is still remote.
And Maria, in perfect contentment, rests upon
the step, watching the ruddy beam from her

112

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

fire — flickering, disappearing, quickened again
to birth.

She seems to remember someone long since
whispering in her ear that the world and life
were cheerless and gray. The daily round,
brightened only by a few unsatisfying, fleet¬
ing pleasures ; the slow passage of unchanging
years; the encounter with some young man,
like other young men, whose patient and hope¬
ful courting ends by winning affection ; a mar¬
riage then, and afterwards a vista of days under
another roof, but scarce different from those
that went before. So does one live, the voice
had told her. Naught very dreadful in the
prospect, and, even were it so, what possible
but submission; yet all level, dreary and chill
as an autumn field.

It is not true ! Alone there in the darkness
Maria shakes her head, a smile upon her lips,
and knows how far from true it is. When she
thinks of François Paradis, his look, his bear¬
ing, of what they are and will be to one another,
he and she, something within her bosom has
strange power to burn with the touch of fire,
and yet to make her shiver. AÎ1 the strong

A TRANSLATION

113

youth of her, the long-suffering of her sooth¬
fast heart find place in it ; in the upspringing of
hope and of longing, this vision of her ap¬
proaching miracle of happiness.

Below the oven the red gleam quivers and
fails.

‘The bread must be ready!’ she murmurs
to herself. But she cannot bring herself at
once to rise, loth as she is to end the fair
dream that seems only beginning.

CHAPTER VIL

September arrived, and the dryness so welcome
for the haymaking persisted till it became a
disaster. According to the Chapdelaines, nev¬
er had the country been visited with such a
drought as this, and every day a fresh motive
was suggested for the divine displeasure.

Oats and wheat took on a sickly colour ere
attaining their growth; a merciless sun with¬
ered the grass and the clover aftermath, and
all day long the famished cows stood lowing
with their heads over the fences. They had
to be watched continually, for even the meagre
standing crop was a sore temptation, and never
a day went by but one of them broke through
the rails in the attempt to appease her hunger
among the grain.

Then, of a sudden one evening, as though
weary of a constancy so unusual, the wind
114

A TRANSLATION

115

shifted and in the morning came the rain. It
fell off and on for a week, and when it ceased
and the wind hauled again to the north-west,
autumn had come.

The autumn! And it seemed as though
spring were here but yesterday. The grain was
yet unripe, though yellowed by the drought;
nothing save the hay was in barn; the other
crops could draw nutriment from the soil only
while the too brief summer warmed it, and al¬
ready autumn was here, the forerunner of re¬
lentless winter, of the frosts, and soon the
snows . . .

Between the wet days there was still fine
bright weather, hot towards noon, when one
might fancy that all was as it had been: the
harvest still unreaped, the changeless setting
of spruces and firs, and ever the same sunsets
of gray and opal, opal and gold, and skies of
misty blue above the same dark woodland. But
in the mornings the grass was sometimes white
with rime, and swiftly followed the earliest dry
frosts which killed and blackened the tops of
the potatoes.

Then, for the first time, a film of ice appeared

116

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

upon the drinking-trough ; melted by the after¬
noon sun it was there a few days later, and yet
a third time in the same week. Frequent
changes of wind brought an alternation of mild
rainy days and frosty mornings; but every
time the wind came afresh from the north-west
it was a little colder, a little more remindful
of the icy winter blasts. Everywhere is autumn
a melancholy season, charged with regrets for
that which is departing, with shrinking from
what is to come ; but under the Canadian skies
it is sadder and more moving than elsewhere,
as though one were bewailing the death of a
mortal summoned untimely by the gods before
he has lived out his span.

Through the increasing cold, the early frosts,
the threats of snow, they held back their hands
and put off the reaping from day to day, en¬
couraging the meagre grain to steal a little
nourishment from the earth’s failing veins
and the spiritless sun. At length, harvest they
must, for October approached. About the time
when the leaves of birches and aspens were
turning, the oats and the wheat were cut and
carried to the barn under a cloudless sky, but
without rejoicing.

A TRANSLATION

117

The yield of grain was poor enough, yet the
hay-crop had been excellent, so that the year
as a whole gave occasion neither for excess of
joy nor sorrow. However, it was long before
the Chapdelaines, in evening talk, ceased de¬
ploring the unheard-of August droughts, the
unprecedented September frosts, which be¬
trayed their hopes. Against the miserly short¬
ness of the summer and the harshness of a
climate that shows no mercy they did not rebel,
were even without a touch of bitterness; but
they did not give up contrasting the season
with that other year of wonders which fond
imagination made the standard of their com¬
parisons; and thus was ever on their lips the
countryman’s perpetual lament, so reasonable
to the ear, but which recurs unfailingly: ‘Had
it only been an ordinary year !’

CHAPTER VIII.

One October morning Maria’s first vision
on arising was of countless snow-flakes sifting
lazily from the skies. The ground was covered,
the trees white; verily it seemed that autumn
was over, when in other lands it had scarce be¬
gun.

But Edwige Légaré thus pronounced sen¬
tence: ‘After the first snowfall there is yet a
month before winter sets in. The old folks
always so declared, and I believe it myself.’
He was right; for in two days a rain carried
off the snow and the dark soil again lay bare.
Still the warning was heeded, and they set
about preparations ; the yearly defences against
the snow that may not be trifled with, and the
piercing cold.

Esdras and Da’Bé protected the foundation
of their dwelling with earth and sand, making
118

A TRANSLATION

119

an embankment at the foot of the walls; the
other men, armed with hammer and nails, went
round the outside of the house, nailing up,
closing chinks, remedying as best they could
the year’s wear and tear. Within, the women
forced rags into the crevices, pasted upon the
wainscotting at the north-west side old news¬
papers brought from the village and carefully
preserved, tested with their hands in every cor¬
ner for draughts.

These things accomplished, the next task
was to lay in the winter’s store of wood. Be¬
yond the fields, at the border of the forest
plenty of dead trees yet were standing. Esdras
and Légaré took ax in hand and felled for
three days; the trunks were piled, awaiting
another fall of snow when they could be loaded
on the big wood sleigh.

All through October, frosty and rainy days
came alternately, and meanwhile the woods
were putting on a dress of unearthly loveliness.
Five hundred paces from the Chapdelaine
house the bank of the Peribonka fell steeply
to the rapid water and the huge blocks of stone
above the fall, and across the river the opposite

120

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

bank rose in the fashion of a rocky amphithe¬
atre, mounting to loftier heights — an amphi¬
theatre trending in a vast curve to the north¬
ward. Of the birches, aspens, alders and wild
cherries scattered upon the slope, October made
splashes of many-tinted red and gold.
Throughout these weeks the ruddy brown of
mosses, the changeless green of fir and cypress,
were no more than a background, a setting only
for the ravishing colours of those leaves born
with the spring, that perish with the autumn.
The wonder of their dying spread over the hills
and unrolled itself, an endless riband following
the river, ever as beautiful, as rich in shades
brilliant and soft, as enrapturing, when they
passed into the remoteness of far northern
regions and were unseen by human eye.

But ere long there sweeps from out the cold
north a mighty wind like a final sentence of
death, the cruel ending to a reprieve, and soon
the poor leaves, brown, red and golden, shaken
too unkindly, strow the ground ; the snow cov¬
ers them, and the white expanse has only for
adornment the sombre green of trees that alter
not their garb — triumphing now, as do those

A TRANSLATION

121

women inspired with bitter wisdom who barter
their right to beauty for life everlasting.

In November Esdras, Da’Bé and Edwige
Légaré went off again to the shanties. The
father and TiEBé harnessed Charles Eugene
to the wood-sleigh, and laboured at hauling in
the trees that had been cut, and piling them
near the house; that done, the two men took
the double-handed saw and sawed, sav/ed,
sawed from morning till night ; it was then the
turn of the axes, and the logs were split as their
size required. Nothing remained but to cord
the split wood in the shed beside the house,
where it was sheltered from the 'Snow; the
huge piles mingling the resinous cypress which
gives a quick hot flame, spruce and red birch,
burning steadily and longer, close-grained
white birch with its marble-like surface, slow¬
er yet to be consumed^ and leaving red embers
in the morning after a long winter’s night.

The moment for laying in wood is also that
of the slaughtering. After entrenching against
cold comes the defence against hunger. The
quarters of pork went into the brine-tub ; from
a beam in the shed there hung the side of a

122

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

fat heifer — the other half sold to people in Hon-
fleur — ^which the dold would keep fresh till
spring ; sacks of flour were piled in a corner of
the house, and Tit’Bé, provided with a spool
of brass wire, set himself to making nooses for
hares.

After the bustle of summer they relapsed into
easy-going ways, for the summer is painfully
short and one must not lose a single hour of
those precious weeks when it is possible to work
on the land, whereas the winter drags slowly
and gives all too much time for the tasks it
brings.

The house became the centre of the uni¬
verse; in truth the only spot where life could
be sustained, and more than ever the great
cast-iron stove was the soul of it. Every little
while some member of the family fetched a
couple of logs from under the staircase; cy¬
press in the morning, spruce throughout the
day, in the evening birch, pushing them in upon
the live coals. Whenever the heat failed, moth¬
er Chapdelaine might be heard saying anx¬
iously: — ‘Don’t let the Are out, children.’
Whereupon Maria, Tit’Bé or Telesphore would

A TRANSLATION

123

open the little door, glance in and hasten to
the pile of wood.

In the mornings Tit’Bé jumped out of bed
long before daylight to see if the great sticks
of birch had done their duty and burned all
night; should, unluckily, the fire be out he
lost no time in rekindling it with birch-bark
and cypress branches, placed heavier pieces
on the mounting flame, and ran back to snuggle
under the brown woollen blankets and patch-
work quilt till the comforting warmth once
more filled the house.

Outside, the neighbouring forest, and even
the fields won from it, were an alien unfriendly
world, upon which they looked wonderingly
through the little square windows. And some¬
times this world was strangely beautiful in
its frozen immobility, with a sky of flawless
blue and a brilliant sun that sparkled on the
snow; but the immaculateness of the blue and
the white alike was pitiless and gave hint of
the murderous cold.

Days there were when the weather was
tempered and the snow fell straight from the
clouds, concealing all : the ground and the low

124

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

growth was covered little by little, the dark line
of the woods was hidden behind the curtain of
serried flakes. Then in the morning the sky
was clear again, but the fierce north-west wind
swayed the heavens. Powdery snow, whipped
from the ground, drove across the burnt lands
and the clearings in blinding squalls, and
heaped itself behind whatever broke the force
of the gale. To the south-east of the house it
built an enormous cone, and between house and
stable raised a drift five feet high through which
the shovel had to carve a path ; but to windward
the ground was bare, scoured by the persistent
blast.

On such days as these the men scarcely left
the house except to care for the beasts, and
came back on the run, their faces rasped with
the cold and shining-wet with snow-crystals
melted by the heat of the house. Chapdelaine
would pluck the icicles from his moustache,
slowly draw off his sheepskin-lined coat and
settle himself by the stove with a satisfied
sigh. ‘The pump is not frozen.?’ he asks. “Is
there plenty of wood in the house?’

Assured that the frail wooden fortress is

A TRANSLATION

125

provided with water, wood and food, he gives
himself up to the indolences of winter quar¬
ters, smoking pipes innumerable while the
womenfolk are busy with the evening meal.
The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls with
reports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed
with birch roars lustily; the howling of the
wind without is like the cries of a besieging
host.

Tt must be a bad day in the woods !’ thinks
Maria to herself; and then perceives that she
has spoken aloud.

‘In the woods they are better off than we are
here,’ answers her father. ‘Up there where the
trees stand close together one does not feel the
wind. You can be sure that Esdras and Da’Bé
are all right.’

‘Yes?’

But it was not of Esdras and Da’Bé that she
had just been thinking.

CHAPTER IX.

Since the coming of winter they had often
talked at the Chapdelaines about the holidays,
and now these were drawing near.

T am wondering whether we shall have any
callers on New Year’s Day,’ said Madame
Chapdelaine one evening. She went over the
list of all relatives and friends able to make
the venture. ‘Azalma Larouche does not live
so far away, but she — she is not very energetic.
The people at St. Prime would not care to take
the journey. Possibly Wilfrid or Ferdinand
might drive from St. Gedeon if the ice on the
lake were in good condition.’ A sigh disclosed
that she still was dreaming of the coming and
going in the old parishes at the time of the New
Year, the family dinners, the unlooked-for vis¬
its of kindred arriving by sleigh from the next
126

A TRANSLATION

127

village, buried under rugs and furs, behind a
horse whose coat was white with frost.

Maria’s thoughts were turning in another
direction. Tf the roads are as bad as they were
last year,’ said she, ‘we shall not be able to
attend the midnight mass. And yet I should so
much have liked it this time, and father prom¬
ised . . .’

Through the little window they looked on
the gray sky, and found little to cheer them.
To go to midnight mass is the natural
and strong desire of every French-Cana-
dian peasant, even of those living farthest
from the settlements. What do they not face
to accomplish it! Arctic cold, the woods at
night, obliterated roads, great distances do but
add to the impressiveness and the mystery.
This anniversary of the birth of Jesus is more
to them than a mere fixture in the calendar
with rites appropriate ; it signifies the renewed
promise of salvation, an occasion of deep re¬
joicing, and those gathered in the wooden
church are imbued with sincerest fervour, are
pervaded with a deep sense of the supernatural.
This year, more than ever, Maria yearned to

128

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

attend the mass after many weeks of remote¬
ness from houses and from churches ; the
favours she would fain demand seemed more
likely to be granted were she able to prefer
them before the altar, aided in heavenward
flight by the wings of music.

But towards the middle of December much
snow fell, dry and fine as dust, and three days
before Christmas the north-west wind arose and
made an end of the roads. On the morrow of
the storm Chapdelaine harnessed Charles Eu¬
gene to the heavy sleigh and departed with
Tit’Bé; they took shovels to clear the way or
lay out another route. The two men returned
by noon, worn out, white with snow, asserting
that there would be no breaking through for
several days. The disappointment must be
borne Maria sighed, but the idea came to her
that there might be other means of attaining
the divine goodwill.

Ts it true, mother,’ she asked as evening
was falling, ‘that if you repeat a thousand Aves
on the day before Christmas you are always
granted the thing you seek.?’

‘Quite true,’ her mother reverently an-

A TRANSLATION

129

swered. ‘One desiring a favour who says her
thousand Aves properly before midnight on
Christmas Eve, very seldom fails to receive
what she asks.’

On Christmas Eve the weather was cold but
windless. The two men went out betimes in
another effort to beat down the road, with no
great hope of success; but long before they
left, and indeed long before daylight, Maria
began to recite her Aves. Awakening very
early, she took her rosary from beneath the
pillow and swiftly repeated the prayer, passing
from the last word to the first without stop¬
ping, and counting, bead by bead.

The others were still asleep ; but Chien left
his place at the stove when he saw that she
moved, and came to sit beside the bed, gravely
reposing his head upon the coverings. Maria’s
glance wandered over the long white muzzle
resting upon the brown wool, the liquid eyes
filled with the dumb creature’s pathetic trust¬
fulness, the drooping glossy ears; while she
ceased not to murmur the sacred words ‘Hail
Mary, full of grace . . .’

Soon Tit’Bè jumped from bed to put wood

130

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

upon the fire; an impulse of s-hyness caused
Maria to turn away and hide her rosary under
the coverlet as she continued to pray. The
stove roared; Chien went back to his usual
spot, and for another half-hour nothing was
stirring in the house save the fingers of Maria
numbering the boxwood beads, and her lips as
they moved rapidly in the task she had laid
upon herself.

Then must she arise, for the day was dawn¬
ing ; make the porridge and the pancakes while
the men went to the stable to care for the
animals, wait upon them when they returned,
wash the dishes, sweep the house. What time
she attended to these things, Maria was ever
raising a little higher toward heaven the monu¬
ment of her Aves ; but the rosary had to be laid
aside and it was hard to keep a true reckoning.
As the morning advanced however, no urgent
duty calling, she was able to sit by the window
and steadily pursue her undertaking.

Noon; and already three hundred Aves.
Her anxiety lessens, for now she feels almost
sure of finishing in time. It comes to her mind
that fasting would give a further title to heav¬
enly consideration, and might, with reason,

A TRANSLATION

131

turn hopes into certainties; wherefore she ate
but little, foregoing all those things she liked
the best.

Throughout the afternoon she must knit the
woollen garment designed for her father as a
New Year’s gift, and though the faithful repe¬
tition ceased not, the work of her fingers was
something of a distraction and a delay; then
came the long preparations for supper, and
finally Tit’Bé brought his mittens to be
mended, so all this time the Aves made slow
and impeded progress, like some devout pro¬
cession brought to halt by secular interruption.

But when it was evening and the tasks of the
day were done, she could resume her seat by
the window where the feeble light of the lamp
did not invade the darkness, look forth upon
the fields hidden beneath their icy cloak, take
the rosary once more in her hands and throw
her heart into the prayer. She was happy that
so many Aves were left to be recited, since
labour and difficulty could only add merit to
her endeavour; even did she wish to humble
herself further and give force to her prayer by
some posture that would bring uneasiness and
pain, by some chastening of the flesh.

132

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Her father and Tit’Bé smoked, their feet
against the stove; her mother sewed new ties
to old moose-hide moccasins. Outside, the
moon had risen, flooding the chill whiteness
with colder light, and the heavens were of a
marvellous purity and depth, sown with stars
that shone like that wondrous star of old.

‘Blessed art Thou amongst women . .

Through repeating the short prayer often¬
times and quickly, she grew confused and some¬
times stopped, her dazed mind lost among the
well-known words. It is only for a moment :
sighing she closes her eyes, and the phrase
which rises at once to her memory and her lips
ceases to be mechanical, detaches itself, again
stands forth in all its hallowed meaning.

‘Blessed art Thou amongst women . .

At length a heaviness weighs upon her, and
the holy words are spoken with greater effort
and slowly; yet the beads pass through her
fingers in endless succession, and each one
launches the offering of an Ave to that sky
where Mary the compassionate is surely seated
on her throne, hearkening to the music of
prayers that ever rise, and brooding over the
memory of that blest night.

A TRANSLATION

133

The Lord is with Thee . .

The fence-rails were very black upon the
white expanse palely lighted by the moon;
trunks cf birch trees standing against the dark
background of forest were like the skeletons
of living creatures smitten with the cold and
stricken by death; but the glacial night was
awesome rather than affrighting.

With the roads as they are we will not be
the only ones who have to stay at home this
evening,’ said Madame Chapdelaine. ‘But is
there anything more lovely than the midnight
mass at Saint Coeur de Marie, with Yvonne
Boilly playing the harmonium, and Pacifique
Simard who sings the Latin so beautifully!’
She was very careful to say nothing that might
seem reproachful or complaining on such a
night as this, but in spite of herself the words
and tone had a sad ring of loneliness and re¬
moteness. Her husband noticed it, and, him¬
self under the influence of the day, was quick
to take the blame.

‘It is true enough, Laura, that you would
have had a happier life with some other man
than me, who lived on a comfortable farm,
near the settlements.’

134

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘No, Samuel; what the good God does is
always right. I grumble ... Of course I
grumble. Is there anyone who hasn’t some¬
thing to grumble about.? But we have never
been unhappy, we two; we have managed to
live without faring over-badly; the boys are
fine boys, hard-working, who bring us nearly
all they earn ; Maria too is a good girl . . .’

Affected by these memories of the past, they
also were thinking of the candles already lit,
of the hymns soon to be raised in honour of the
Saviour’s birth. Life had always been a simple
and a straightforward thing for them; severe
but inevitable toil, a good understanding be¬
tween man and wife, obedience alike to the
laws of nature and of the Church. Every¬
thing was drawn into the same woof ; the rites
of their religion and the daily routine of exis¬
tence so woven together that they could not
distinguish the devout emotion possessing them
from the mute love of each for each.

Little Alma Rose heard praises in the air
and hastened to demand her portion. ‘I have
been a good girl too, haven’t I father?’

‘Certainly . . . Certainly. A black sin

A TRANSLATION

135

indeed if one were naughty on the day when
the little Jesus was born.’

To the children, Jesus of Nazareth was ever
‘the little Jesus,’ the curly-headed babe of the
sacred picture; and in truth, for the parents
as well, such was the image oftenest brought
to mind by the Name. Not the sad enigmatic
Christ of the Protestant, but a being more
familiar and less august, a new-born infant in
his mother’s arms, or at least a tiny child Vvho
might be loved without great effort of the mind
or any thought of the coming sacrifice.

‘Would you like me to rock you?’

‘Yes.’

He took the little girl on his knees and began
to swing her back and forth.

‘And are we going to sing too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well ; now sing with me:’

Dans son étable,

Que Jésus est charmant!

Qu’il est aimable
Dans son abaissement . . o

136

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

He began in quiet tones that he might not
drown the other slender voice; but soon emo¬
tion carried him away and he sang with all his
might, his gaze dreamy and remote. Teles-
phore drew near and looked at him with
worshipping eyes. To these children brought
up in a lonely house, with only their parents
for companions, Samuel Chapdelaine embod¬
ied all there was in the world of wisdom and
might. As he was ever gentle and patient,
always ready to take the children on his knee
and sing them hymns, or those endless old
songs he taught them one by one, they loved
him with a rare affection.

. . . Tous les palais des rois
N’ont rien de comparable
Aux beautés que je vois
Dans cette étable.

‘Once more.? Very well.’

This time the mother and Tit’Bé joined in.
Maria could not resist staying her prayers for
a few moments that she might look and hear¬
ken; but the words of the hymn renewed her
ardour, and she soon took up the task again

A TRANSLATION

137

with a livelier faith . . . ‘Hail Mary, full of
grace . . /

Trois gros navires sont arrivés,

Chargés d’avoine, chargés de blé.

Nous irons sur l’eau nous y prom-promener,
Nous irons jouer dans l’île . . .

‘And now? Another song: which?’ With¬
out waiting for a reply he struck in . . .

‘No? not that one . . . Claire Fontaine?
Ah ! That’s a beautiful one, that is ! We shall
all sing it together.’

He glanced at Maria, but seeing the beads
ever slipping through her fingers he would not
intrude.

A la claire fontaine
M’en allant promener.

J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle
Que je m’y suis baigné . , .

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime.

Jamais je ne t’oublierai . . .

Words and tune alike haunting ; the unaffected
sadness of the refrain lingering in the ear, a
song that well may find its way to any heart.

138

IMARIA CHAPDELAINE

. . . Sur la plus haute branche,
Le rossignol chantait.

Chante, rossignol, chante.

Toi qui a le coeur gai . . .

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
Jamais je ne t’oublierai . . .

The rosary lay still in the long fingers.
Maria did not sing with the others ; but she was
listening, and this lament of a love that was
unhappy fell very sweetly and movingly on
her spirit a little weary with prayer.

. . . Tu as le coeur à rire.

Moi je l’ai à pleurer.

J’ai perdu ma maîtresse
Sans pouvoir la r’trouver,

Pour un bouquet de roses
Que je lui refusai
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,

Jamais je ne t’oublierai.

Maria looked through the window at the
white fields circled by mysterious forest; the
passion of religious feeling, the tide of young
love rising within her, the sound of the fam¬
iliar voices, fused in her heart to a single emo-

A TRANSLATION

139

tion. Truly the world was filled with love
that evening, with love human and divine,
simple in nature and mighty in strength, one
and the other most natural and right ; so inter¬
mingled that the beseeching of heavenly favour
upon dear ones was scarcely more than the
expression of an earthly affection, while the
artless love songs were chanted with solemn¬
ity of voice and exaltation of spirit fit for ad¬
dresses to another world.

... Je voudrais que la rose
Fût encore au rosier,

Et que le rosier même
A la mer fût jeté.

Il y a longtemps, que je t’aime,

Jamais je ne t’oublierai . . .

‘Hail Mary, full of grace . .

The song ended, Maria forthwith resumed
her prayers with zeal refreshed, and once again
the tale of the Aves mounted.

Little Alma Rose, asleep on her father’s knee,
was undressed and put to bed; Telesphore fol¬
lowed ; Tit’Bé arose in turn, stretched himself,
and filled the stove with green birch logs ; the

140

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

father made a last trip to the stable and came
back running, saying that the cold was increas¬
ing. Soon all had retired, save Maria.

‘You won’t forget to put out the lamp?’

‘No, father.’

Forthwith she quenched the light, preferring
it so, and seated herself again by the window
to repeat the last Aves. When she had finished,
a scruple assailed her, and a fear lest she had
erred in the reckoning, because it had not
always been possible to count the beads of her
rosary. Out of prudence she recited yet an¬
other fifty and then was silent — ^jaded, weary,
but full of happy confidence, as though the
moment had brought her a promise inviol¬
able.

The world outside was lit; wrapped in that
frore splendour which the night unrolls over
lands of snow when the sky is clear and the
moon is shining. Within the house was dark¬
ness, and it seemed that wood and field had
illumined themselves to mark the coming of
thc'ïholy hour.

‘The thousand Aves have been said,’ mur¬
mured Maria to herself, ‘but I have not yet

A TRANSLATION

141

asked for anything . . . not in words.’ She
had thought that perhaps it were not need¬
ful ; that the Divinity might understand with¬
out hearing wishes shaped by lips — Mary above
all . . . Who had been a woman upon earth.
But at the last her simple mind was taken with
a doubt, and she tried to find speech for the
favour she was seeking.

François Paradis . . . Most surely it con¬
cerns François Paradis, Hast Thou already
guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might
she frame this her desire without impiety?
That he should be spared hardship in the woods
. . . That he should be true to his word and
give up drinking and swearing . . . That he
return in the spring . . .

That he return in the spring . . . She goes
no further, for it seems to her that when he is
with her again, his promise kept, all the happi¬
ness in the world must be within their reach,
unaided . . . almost unaided ... If it be
not presumptuous so to think . . .

That he return in the spring . . . Dreaming
of his return, of François, the handsome sun¬
burnt face turned to hers, Maria forgets all

142

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

else, and looks long with unseeing eyes at the
snow-covered ground which the moonlight has
turned into a glittering extent of some magic
texture, like to ivory and mother-of-pearl —
at the black pattern of the fences outlined upon
it, and the menacing ranks of the dark forest.

CHAPTER X.

New Year's Day, and not a single caller!
Towards evening the mother of the family, a
trifle cast down, hid her depression behind a
mask of extra cheeriness. ‘Even if no one
comes,’ said she, ‘that is no reason for allow¬
ing ourselves to be unhappy. We are going to
make la tire'

The children exclaimed with delight, and
followed the preparations with impatient eyes.
Molasses and brown sugar were set on the stove
to boil, and when this had proceeded far enough
Telesphore brought in a large dish of lovely
white snow. They all gathered about the table
as a few drops of the boiling syrup were allowed
to fall upon the snow where they instantly be¬
came crackly bubbles, deliciously cold.

Each was helped in turn, the big people
making a merry pretence of the children’s im-
143

144

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

feigned greed; but soon, and very wisely, the
tasting was checked, that appetite might not be
in peril for the real la tire, the confection of
which was only begun. After further cooking,
and just at the proper moment, the cooling
toffee must be pulled for a long time. The
mother’s strong hands plied unceasingly for
five minutes, folding and drawing out the sug¬
ary skein; the movement became slower and
slower, until, stretched for the last time to the
thickness of a finger, it was cut into lengths
with scissors — not too easily, for it was already
hard. The la tire was made.

The children were busy with their first por¬
tions, when a knocking was heard on the door.
‘Eutrope Gagnon,’ at once declared Chapde-
laine. T was just saying to myself that it
would be an odd thing if he did not come and
spend the evening with us.’

Eutrope Gagnon it was in truth. Entering,
he bade them all good evening, and laid his
woollen cap upon the table. Maria looked at
him, a blush upon her cheek. Custom ordains
that on the first day of the year the young
men shall kiss the women-folk, and Maria

A TRANSLATION

145

knew well enough that Eutrope, shy as he was,
would exercise his privilege ; she stood motion¬
less by the table, unprotesting, yet thinking of
another kiss she would have dearly welcomed.
But the young man took the chair offered him
and sat down, his eyes upon the floor.

‘You are the only visitor who has come our
way to-day/ said Chapdelaine, ‘and I suppose
you have seen no one either. I felt pretty cer¬
tain you would be here this evening.’

‘Naturally ... I would not let New
Year’s Day go by without paying you a visit.
But, besides that, I have news to tell.’

‘News.?’

Under the questioning eyes of the household
he did not raise his eyes.

‘By your face I am afraid you have bad
news.’

‘Yes.’

With a start of fear the mother half rose.
‘Not about the boys?’

‘No, Madame Chapdelaine. Esdras and
Da’Bé are well, if that be God’s pleasure. The
word I bring is not of them — not of your own
kin. It concerns a young man you know.’

146

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Pausing a moment he spoke a name under his
breath : — ^ ‘F rançois Paradis.’

His glance was lifted to Maria and as quick¬
ly fell, but she did not so much as see his look
of honest distress. Deep stillness weighed
upon the house — upon the whole universe.
Everything alive and dead was breathlessly
awaiting news of such dreadful moment-
touching him that was for her the one man in
all the world . . .

‘This is what happened. You knew perhaps
that he was foreman in a shanty above La
Tuque, on the Vermilion River. About the
middle of December he suddenly told the boss
that he was going off to spend Christmas and
New Year at Lake St. John — up here. The
boss objected, naturally enough; for if the men
take ten or fifteen days’ leave right in the mid¬
dle of the winter you might as well stop the
work altogether. The boss did not wish him
to go and said so plainly; but you know Fran¬
çois — a man not to be thv/arted when a notion
entered his head. He answered that he was set
on going to the Lake for the holidays, and that
go he would. Then the boss let him have his

A TRANSLATION

147

way, afraid to lose a man useful beyond the
common, and of such experience in the bush.’

Eutrope Gagnon was speaking with unusual
ease, slowly, but without seeking words, as
though his story had been shaped beforehand.
Amid her overwhelming grief, the thought
flitted through Maria’s heart: — -'‘François
wished to come here ... to me,’ and a fugi¬
tive joy touched it as a swallow in flight ruffles
the water with his wing.

‘The shanty was not very far in the woods,
only two days’ journey from the Transcon¬
tinental which passes La Tuque. But as the
luck was, something had happened to the line
and the trains were not running. I heard all
this through Johnny Niquette of St. Henri,
who arrived from La Tuque two days ago.’

‘Yes.’

‘When François found that he could not
take the train he burst into a laugh, and in
that sort of a humour said that as it was a case
of walking he would walk all the way — reach¬
ing the Lake by following the rivers, first the
Croche and then the Ouatchouan which falls
in near Roberval.’

148

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘That is so,’ said Chapdelaine. ‘It can be
done. I have gone that way.’

‘Not at this time of year, Mr. Chapdelaine,
certainly not just at this time. Everyone there
told François that it would be foolhardy to
attempt such a trip in midwinter, about Christ¬
mas, with the cold as great as it was, some four
feet of snow lying in the woods, and alone. But
he only laughed and told them that he was used
to the woods and that a little difficulty was not
going to frighten him, because he was bound to
get to the upper side of the Lake for the holi¬
days, and ihat where the Indians were able to
cross he could make the crossing too. Only —
you know it very well, Mr. Chapdelaine — ^when
the Indians take that journey it is in company,
and with their dogs. François set off alone,
on snow-shoes, pulling his blankets and provis¬
ions on a toboggan.’

No one had uttered a word to hasten or check
the speaker. They listened, as to him whose
story’s end looms into view, before the eyes
but darkly veiled, like a figure drawing near
who hides his face.

‘You will remember the weather a week be-

A TRANSLATION

149

fore Christmas — the heavy snow that fell, and
after it the norVest gale. It happened that
François was then in the great burnt lands,
where the fine snow drives and drifts so terribly.
In such a place the best of men have little
chance when it is very cold and the storm lasts.
And, if you recall it, the norVester was blow¬
ing for three days on end, stiff enough to flay
you.’

‘Yes, and then.’

The narrative he had framed did not carry
him further, or perhaps he could not bring him¬
self to speak the final words, for it was some
time before the low-voiced answer came : — ‘He
went astray . . .’

Those who have passed their lives within the
shadow of the Canadian forests know the mean¬
ing but too well. The daring youths to whom
this evil fortune happens in the woods, who go
astray — are lost — but seldom return. Some¬
times a search-party finds their bodies in the
spring, after the melting of the snows. In Que¬
bec, and above all in the far regions of the
north, the very word, écarté, has taken on a
new and sinister import, from the peril over-

150

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

hanging him who loses his way, for a short day
only, in that limitless forest.

‘He went astray . . . The storm caught
him in the burnt country and he halted for a
day. So much we know, for the Indians
found a shelter of fir branches he had made for
himself, and they saw his tracks. He set out
again because his provisions were low and he
was in haste to reach the end of his journey, as
I suppose ; but the weather did not mend, snow
was falling, the norVest wind never eased, and
it is likely he caught no glimpse of the sun to
guide him, for the Indians said that his tracks
turned off from the river Croche which he had
been following and wandered away, straight to
the north.’

There was no further speech; neither from
the two men who had listened with assenting
motions of their heads while they followed every
turn of Eutrope’s grim story; nor from the
mother whose hands were clasped upon her
knees, as in a belated supplication; nor from
Maria . . .

‘When they heard this, men from Ouat-
chouan set forth after the weather was a little

A TRANSLATION

151

better. But all his footsteps were covered, and
they returned saying that they had found no
trace; that was three days ago . . . He is
lost . . .

The listeners stirred, and broke the stillness
with a sigh; the tale was told, nor was there
a word that anyone might speak. The fate of
François Paradis was as mournfully sure as
though he were buried in the cemetery at St.
Michel de Mistassini to the sound of chants,
with the blessing of a priest.

Silence fell upon the house and all within it.
Chapdelaine was leaning forward, elbows on
his knees, his face working, dully beating one
list against the other. At length he spoke : Tt
shows we are but little children in the hand of
the good God. François was one of the best
men of these parts in the woods, and at finding
his way; people who came here used to take
him as guide, and always did he bring them
back without mishap. And now he himself
is lost. We are but little children. Some there
be who think themselves pretty strong — able
to get on without God’s help in their houses
and on their lands . . . but in the bush . . . ’

1S2

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

With solemn voice and slowly-moving head he
repeated: We are but little children/

‘A good man he was/ said Eutrope Gagnon,
‘in very truth a good man, strong and brave,
with ill-will to none.’

‘Indeed that is true. I am not saying that
the good God had cause to send him to his
death — him more than another. He was a
fine fellow, hard-working, and I loved him well.
But it shows you . .

‘No one ever had a thing against him.’
Eutrope’s generous insistence carried him on.
‘A man hard to match for work, afraid of noth¬
ing and obliging withal. Everyone who knew
him was fond of him — you will not find his
like.’

Raising his eyes to Maria he repeated with
emphasis: ‘He was a good man, you will not
find his like.’

‘When we were at Mistassini,’ began Ma¬
dame Chapdelaine, ‘seven years ago, he was
only a lad, but very strong and quick, and as
tall as he is now — I mean as he was when he
came here last summer. Always good-natured
too. No one could help liking him.’

A TRANSLATION

153

They all looked straight before them in speak¬
ing, and yet what they said seemed to be for
Maria alone, as if the dear secret of her heart
were open to them. But she spoke not, nor
moved, her eyes fixed upon the frosted panes
of the little window, impenetrable as the
wall.

Eutrope Gagnon did not linger. The Chap-
delaines, left to themselves, were long without
speech. At last the father said in a halting
voice: ‘François Paradis was almost alone in
the world; now, as we all had an affection for
him, we perhaps might have a mass or two said.
What do you think, Laura?’

‘Yes indeed. Three high masses with mus¬
ic, and when the boys return from the woods—
in health, if such be the will of the good God-
three more for the repose of his soul, poor lad !
And every Sunday we shall say a prayer for
him.’

‘He was like the rest of us,’ Chapdelaine
continued, ‘not without fault, of course, but
kindly and well-living. God and the Holy Vir¬
gin will have pity on him.’

Again silence. Maria well knew it was for

154

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

her they said these things — aware of her grief
and seeking to assuage it ; but she was not able
to speak, either to praise the dead or utter her
sorrow. A hand had fastened upon her throat,
stifling her, as the narrative unfolded and the
inevitable end came within her view ; and now
this hand found its way into her breast
and was crushing her heart. Presently she
would know a yet more intolerable pain, but
now she only felt the deadly grasp of those five
fingers closed about her heart.

Other words were said, but they Scarce
reached her ear; then came the familiar evening
stir of preparation for the night, the father’s
departure on a last visit to the stable and his
swift return, face red with the cold, slamming
the door hastily in a swirl of frosty vapour.

‘Come Maria.’ The mother called her very
gently, and laid a hand upon her shoulder.
She rose and went to kneel and pray with the
others. Voice answered to voice for ten min¬
utes, murmuring the sacred words in low
monotone.

The usual prayer at an end, the mother
whispered: — ‘Yet five Paters and five Aves for

A TRANSLATION

155

the souls of those who have suffered misfortune
in the forest.’ And the voices again rose, this
time more subdued, breaking sometimes to a
sob.

When they were silent, and all had risen after
the last sign of the cross, Maria went back to
the window. The frost upon the panes made
of them so many fretted squares through
which the eye could not penetrate, shutting
away the outside world ; but Maria saw them
not, for the tears welled to her eyes and blinded
her. She stood there motionless, with arms
hanging piteously by her side, a stricken fig¬
ure of grief ; then a sudden anguish yet keener
and more unbearable seized upon her ; blindly
she opened the door and went out upon the
step.

The world that lay beyond the threshold,
sunk in moveless white repose, was of an im¬
mense serenity; but when Maria passed from
the sheltering walls the cold smote her like
the hungry blade of a sword and the forest
leaped toward her in menace, its inscrutable
face concealing a hundred dreadful secrets
which called aloud to her in lamentable voices.

156

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

With a little moan she drew back, and closing
the door sat shivering beside the stove. Numb¬
ness was yielding, sorrow taking on an edge,
and the hand that clutched her heart set itself
to devising new agonies, each one subtler and
more cruel than the last.

How he must have suffered, far off there
amid the snows ! So thought she, as still her
own face remembered the sting of the bitter
air. Men threatened by this fate had told her
that death coming in such a guise smote with
gentle and painless hand — a hand that merely
lulled to sleep ; but she could not make herself
believe it, and all the sufferings that François
might have endured before giving up and falling
to the white ground, passed before her eyes.

No need for her to see the spot ; too well she
knew the winter terrors of the great forest, the
snow heaped to the firs’ lower branches, alders
almost buried beneath it, birches and aspens
naked as skeletons and shuddering in the icy
wind, a sunless sky above the massed and
gloomy spires of green. She sees François
making his way through the close-set trees,
limbs stiffened with the cold, his skin raw with

A TRANSLATION

157

that pitiless norVester, gnawed by hunger,
stumbling with fatigue, his feet so weary that
with no longer strength to lift them his snow-
shoes often catch the snow and throw him to his
knees.

Doubtless when the storm abated he saw his
error, knew that he was walking toward the
barren northland, turned at once and took the
right course — he so experienced, the woods his
home from boyhood. But his food is nearly
gone, the cold tortures him ; with lowered head
and clenched teeth he fights the implacable
winter, calling to aid his every reserve of
strength and high courage. He thinks of the
road he must follow, the miles to be overcome,
measures his chances of life ; and fitful memor¬
ies arise of a house, so warm and snug, where
all will greet him gladly ; of Maria who, know¬
ing what he has dared for her sake, will at
length raise to him her truthful eyes shining
with love.

Perhaps he fell for the last time when suc¬
cour was near, a few yards only from house or
shanty. Often so it happens. Cold and his
ministers of death flung themselves upon him

158

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

as their prey; they have stilled the strong
limbs forever, covered his open handsome face
with snow, closed the fearless eyes without
gentleness or pity, changed his living body into
a thing of ice . . . Maria has no more tears
that she may shed, but she shivers and trembles
as he must have trembled and shivered before
he sank into merciful unconsciousness ; horror
and pity in her face, Maria draws nearer the
stove as though she might thus bring him
warmth and shield his dear life against the
assassin.

‘O phrist Jesus, who didst stretch forth
Thine arm to those in need, why didst Thou
not disperse the snows with those pale hands
of Thine.** Holy Virgin, why didst Thou not
sustain him by Thy power when, for the last
time, his feet were stumbling.? In all the le¬
gions of heaven why was there found no angel
to show him the way.?’

But it is her grief that utters these reproaches,
and the steadfast heart of Maria is fearful of
having sinned in yielding to it. Another dread
is soon to assail her. Perhaps François Paradis
was not able quite faithfully to keep the prom¬
ises he made to her. In the shanty, among

A TRANSLATION

159

rough and careless men, may he not have had
moments of weakness; blasphemed or taken
the names of the saints in vain, and thus have
gone to his death with sin upon his conscience,
under the weight of divine wrath.

Her parents had promised but a little ago
that masses should be said. How good they
were! Having guessed her secret how kindly
had they been silent! But she herself might
help with prayers the poor soul in torment.
Her beads still lay upon the table; she takes
them in her hands, and forthwith the words of
the Ave mount to her lips : — Hail Mary, full of
grace . . /

Did you doubt of her, 0 mother of the Gali¬
lean? Since that only eight days before she
strove to reach your ear with her thousand
prayers, and you but clothed yourself in divine
impassivity while fate accomplished its pur¬
pose, think you that she questions your good¬
ness or your power? It would indeed have
been to misjudge her. As once she sought your
aid for a man, so now she asks your pardon
for a soul, in the same words, with the same
humility and boundless faith.

160

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘Blessed art Thou amongst women, and
blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus/

But still she cowers by the great stove, and
though the fire’s heat strikes through her, she
ceases not to shudder as she thinks of the
frozen world about her, of François Paradis,
who cannot be insentient, who must be so
bitter cold in his bed of snow . . .

CPIAPTER XL

One evening in February Samuel Chapde*
laine said to his daughter: ‘The roads are
passable ; if you wish it, Maria, we shall go to
La Pipe on Sunday for the mass.’

‘Very well, father;’ but she replied in a
voice so dejected, almost indifferent, that her
parents exchanged glances behind her back.

Country folk do not die for love, nor spend
the rest of their days nursing a wound. They
are too near to nature, and know too well the
stern laws that rule their lives. Thus it is
perhaps, that they are sparing of high-sounding
words; choosing to say ‘liking’ rather than
‘loving,’ ‘ennui’ rather than ‘grief,’ that so
the joys and sorrows of the heart may bear a
fit proportion to those more anxious concerns
of life which have to do with their daily toil,
the yield of their lands, provision for the
future.

161

162

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Maria did not for a moment dream that life
for her was over, or that the world must hence¬
forward be a sad wilderness, because Fran¬
çois Paradis would not return in the spring nor
ever again. But her heart was aching, and
while sorrow possessed it the future had no
promise for her.

When Sunday arrived, father and daughter
early began to make ready for the two hours’
journey which would bring them to St. Henri
de Taillon, and the church. Before half-past
seven Charles Eugene was harnessed, and
Maria, still wearing a hea\y winter cloak, had
carefully deposited in her purse the list of her
mother’s commissions. A few minutes later
the sleigh-bells were tinkling, and the rest of
thé family grouped themselves at the little
square window to watch the departure.

For the first hour the horse could not go be¬
yond a walk, sinking knee-deep in snow; for
only the Chapdelaines used this road, laid out
and cleared by themselves, and not enough
travelled to become smooth and hard. But
when they reached the beaten highway Charles
Eugene trotted along merrily.

A TRANSLATION

163

They passed through Ronfleur, a hamlet of
eight scattered houses, and then re-entered the
woods. After a time they came upon clearings,
then houses appeared dotted along the road;
little by little the dusky ranks of the forest
retreated, and soon they were in the village
with other sleighs before and following them,
all going toward the church.

Since the beginning of the year Maria had
gone three times to hear mass at St. Henri dé
Taillon, which the people of the country per¬
sist in calling La Pipe, as in the brave days of
the first settlers. For her, besides being an
exercise of piety, this was almost the only dis¬
traction possible and her father sought to
furnish it whenever he could do so, believing
that the impressive rites of the church and a
meeting vdth acquaintances in the village
would help to banish her grief.

On this occasion when the mass was ended,
instead of paying visits they went to the curées
house. It was already thronged with members
of the congregation from remote farms, for
the Canadian priest not only has the con¬
sciences of his flock in charge, but is their

164

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

counsellor in all affairs, and the composer of
their disputes; the solitary individual of dif¬
ferent station to whom they can resort for the
solving of their difficulties.

The curé of St. Henri sent none away empty
who asked his advice ; some he dealt with in a
few swift words amidst a general conversation
where he bore his cheerful part; others at
greater length in the privacy of an adjoining
room. When the turn of the Chapdelaines
came he looked at his watch.

We shall have dinner first. What say you,
my good friend.? You must have found an
appetite on the road. As for myself, singing
mass makes me hungry beyond anything you
could believe.’

He laughed heartily, more tickled than any¬
one at his own joke, and led his guests into
the dining-room. Another priest was there
from a neighbouring parish, and two or three
farmers. The meal was one long discussion
about husbandry, with a few amusing stories
and bits of harmless gossip thrown in ; now and
then one of the farmers, suddenly remember¬
ing where he was, would labour some pious

A TRANSLATION

165

remark which the priests acknowledged with
a nod or an absent-minded ‘Yes! Yes!’

The dinner over at last, some of the guests
departed after lighting their pipes. The curé,
catching a glance from Chapdelaine, seemed to
recall something ; arising, he motioned to
Maria, and went before her into the next room
which served him both for visitors and as his
office.

A small harmonium stood against the wall ;
on the other side was a table with agricultural
journals, a Civil Code and a few books bound
in black leather; on the walls hung a portrait
of Pius X., an engraving of the Holy Family,
the coloured broadside of a Quebec merchant
with sleighs and threshing-machines side by
side, and a number of official notices as to pre¬
cautions against forest fires and epidemics
amongst cattle.

Turning to Maria, the curé said kindly
enough: — ‘So it appears that you are distres¬
sing yourself beyond what is reasonable and
right.?’

She looked at him humbly, not far from be¬
lieving that the priest’s supernatural power had
divined her trouble without need of telling.

166

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

He inclined his tall figure, and bent toward her
his thin peasant face; for beneath the robe was
still the tiller of the soil : the gaunt and yellow
visage, the cautious eyes, the huge bony shoul¬
ders. Even his hands — hands wont to dispense
the favours of heaven — were those of the hus¬
bandman, with swollen veins beneath the
dark skin. But Maria saw in him only the
priest, the curé of the parish, appointed of God
to interpret life to her and show her the path
of duty.

‘Be seated there,’ he said, pointing to a chair.
She sat down somewhat like a schoolgirl who is
to have a scolding, somewhat like a woman in
a sorcerer’s den who awaits in mingled hope and
dread the working of his unearthly spells.

An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the
hard snow. Chapdelaine drowsed, and the reins
were slipping from his open hands. Rousing
himself and lifting his head, he sang again in
full- voiced fervour the hymn he was singing as
they left the village : —

. . . Adorons-le dans le ciel.

Adorons-le sur l’autel . . .

A TRANSLATION

167

Then he fell silent, his chin dropping slowly
toward his breast, and the only sound upon the
road was the tinkle of sleigh-bells.

Maria was thinking of the priest’s words:
‘If there was affection between you it is very
proper that you should know regret. But you
v/ere not pledged tooneanother,becauseneither
you nor he had spoken to your parents ; there¬
fore it is not befitting or right that you should
sorrow thus, nor feel so deep regret for a young
man who, after all is said, was nothing to
you . . .’

And again: ‘That masses should be sung,
that you should pray for him, such things are
useful and good, you could do no better. Three
high masses with music, and three more when
the boys return from the woods, as your father
has asked me, most assuredly these will help
him, and also you may be certain they will de¬
light him more than your lamentations, since
they will shorten by so much his time of expi¬
ation. But to grieve like this, and to go about
casting gloom over the household is not well,
nor is it pleasing in the sight of God.’

He did not appear in the guise of a comforter.

168

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

nor of one who gives counsel in the secret
affairs of the heart, but rather as a man of the
law or a chemist who enunciates his bald for¬
mulas, invariable and unfailing.

‘The duty of a girl like you — good-looking,
healthy, active withal and a clever housewife —
is in the first place to help her old parents, and
in good time to marry and bring up a Christian
family of her own. You have no call to the
religious life.? No. Then you must give up
torturing yourself in this fashion, because it is
a sacrilegious thing and unseemly, as the young
man was nothing whatever to you. The good
God knows what is best for us ; we should nei¬
ther rebel nor complain . . .’

In all this, but one phrase left Maria a little
doubting, it was the priest’s assurance that
François Paradis, in the place where now he
was, cared only for masses to repose his soul,
and never at all for the deep and tender regret
lingering behind him. This she could not con¬
strain herself to believe. Unable to think of
him otherwise in death than in life, she felt
it must bring him something of happiness and
consolation that her sorrow was keeping alive

A TRANSLATION

169

their ineffectual love for a little space beyond
death. Yet, since the priest had said it . . .

The road wound its way among the trees
rising sombrely from the snow. Here and there
a squirrel, alarmed by the swiftly passing sleigh
and the tinkling bells, sprang upon a trunk and
scrambled upward, clinging to the bark. From
the gray sky a biting cold was falling and the
wind stung the cheek, for this was February,
with two long months of winter yet to come.

As Charles Eugene trotted along the beaten
road, bearing the travellers to their lonely
house, Maria, in obedience to the words of the
curé at St. Henri, strove to drive out grief and
put mourning from her; as simple-mindedly
as she would have fought the temptation of a
dance, of a doubtful amusement or anything
that was plainly wrong and hence forbidden.

They reached home as night was falling.
The coming of evening was only a slow fading of
the light, for, since morning, the heavens had
been overcast, the sun obscured. A sadness
rested upon the pallid earth; the firs and cy¬
presses did not wear the aspect of living trees
and the naked birches seemed to doubt of the

170

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

springtime. Maria shivered as she left the
sleigh, and hardly noticed Chien, barking and
gambolling a welcome, or the children who
called to her from the door-step. The world
seemed strangely empty, for this evening at
least. Love was snatched away, and they for¬
bade remembrance. She went swiftly into the
house without looking about her, conscious of
a new dread and hatred for the bleak land, the
forest’s eternal gloom, the snow and the cold,
for all those things she had lived her life
amongst — ^which now had wounded her.

CHAPTER XIL

March came, and one day Tit’Bé brought
the news from Honfleur that there would be
a large gathering in the evening at Ephrem
Surprenantes to which everyone was invited.

But someone must stay to look after the
house, and as Madame Chapdelaine had set
her heart on this little diversion after being
cooped up for all these months, it was Tit’Bé
himself who was left at home. Honfleur, the
nearest village to their house, was eight miles
away; but what were eight miles over the
snow and through the woods compared with
the delight of hearing songs and stories, and
of talk with people from afar?

A numerous company was assembled under
the Surprenant roof: several of the villagers,
the three Frenchmen who had bought his
nephew Lorenzo’s farm, and also, to the
171

172

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Chapdelaines’ great surprise, Lorenzo himself,
back once more from the States upon business
that related to the sale and the settling of his
father’s affairs. He greeted Maria very
warmly, and seated himself beside her.

The men lit their pipes ; they chatted about
the weather, the condition of the roads, the
country news ; but the conversation lagged, as
though all were looking for it to take some
unusual turn. Their glances sought Lorenzo
and the three Frenchmen, expecting strange
and marvellous tales of distant lands and un¬
familiar manners from an assembly so far out
of the common. The Frenchmen, only a few
months in the country, apparently felt a like
curiosity, for they listened, and spoke but
little.

Samuel Chapdelaine, who was meeting them
for the first time, deemed himself called upon
to put them through a catechism in the ingen¬
uous Canadian fashion.

‘So you have come here to till the land.
How do you like Canada ?’

Tt is a beautiful country, new and so
vast ... In the summer-time there are many

A TRANSLATION

173

flies, and the winters are trying ; but I suppose
that one gets used to these things in timed

The father it was who made reply, his sons
only nodding their heads in assent with eyes
glued to the floor. Their appearance alone
would have served to distinguish them from
the other dwellers in the village, but as they
spoke the gap widened, and the words that fell
from their lips had a foreign ring. There was
none of the slowness of the Canadian speech,
nor of that indefinable accent found in no cor¬
ner of France, which is only a peasant blend of
the different pronunciations of former emi¬
grants. They used words and turns of phrase
one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns,
and which to these simple men seemed fastid¬
ious and wonderfully refined.

‘Before coming to these parts were you
farmers in your own country?’

‘No.’

‘What trade then did you follow?’

The Frenchman hesitated a moment before
replying; possibly thinking that what he was
about to say would be novel, and hard for them
to understand. ‘I was a tuner myself, a piano-

174

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

tuner ; my two sons here were clerks, Edmond
in an office, Pierre in a shop.’

Clerks — ^that was plain enough for anyone;
but their minds were a little hazy as to the
father’s business.

However Ephrem Surprenant chimed in
with: ‘Piano-tuner; that was it, just so!’
And his glance at Conrad Neron his neighbour
was a trifle superior and challenging, as
though intimating: — ‘You would not believe
me, and maybe you don’t know what it means,
but now you see . . .’

‘Piano-tuner,’ Samuel Chapdelaine echoed
in turn, slowly grasping the meaning of the
words. ‘And is that a good trade Do you
earn handsome wages.? Not too handsome,
eh! ... At any rate you are well educated,
you and your sons; you can read and write
and cipher? And here am I, not able even
to read.’

‘Nor I!’ struck in Ephrem Surprenant,
and Conrad Neron and Egide Racicot add¬
ed: ‘Nor I!’ ‘Nor I!’ in chorus, where¬
upon the whole of them broke out laughing.

A motion of the Frenchman’s hand told

A TRANSLATION

175

them indulgently that they could very well
dispense with these accomplishments ; to him¬
self of little enough use at the moment.

‘You were not able to make a decent living
out of your trades over there. That is so, is
it not And therefore you came here?’

The question was put simply, without
thought of offence, for he was amazed that
anyone should abandon callings that seemed
so easy and so pleasant for this arduous life
on the land.

Why indeed had they come? ... A few
months earlier they would have discovered a
thousand reasons and clothed them in words
straight from the heart : weariness of the foot¬
way and the pavement, of the town’s sullied
air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong sla¬
very ; some chance stirring word of an irrespon¬
sible speaker preaching the gospel of vigour and
enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon a
fruitful soil. But a few months ago they
could have found glowing sentences to tell it
all . . . Now their best was a sorry effort to
evade the question, as they groped for any of
thé illusions that remained to them.

176

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘People are not always happy in the cities,’
said the father. ‘Everything is dear, and one
is confined.’

In their narrow Parisian lodging it had
seemed so wonderful a thing to them, the no¬
tion that in Canada they would spend their
days out of doors, breathing the taintless air
of a new country, close beside the mighty for¬
est. The black-flies they had not foreseen,
nor comprehended the depth of the winter’s
cold ; the countless ill turns of a land that has
no pity were undivined.

‘Did you picture it to yourselves as you
have found it,’ Chapdelaine persisted, ‘the
country here, the life.?’

‘Not exactly,’ replied the Frenchman in a
low voice. ‘No, not exactly . . .’ And a
shadow crossed his face which brought from
Ephrem Surprenant : — ‘It is rough here, rough
and hard!’

Their heads assented, and their eyes fell:
three narrow-shouldered men, their faces with
the pallor of the town still upon them after six
months on the land; three men whom a fancy
had torn from counter, office, piano-stool —

A TRANSLATION

177

from the only lives for which they were bred.
For it is not the peasant alone who suffers by
uprooting from his native soil. They were
seeing their mistake, and knew they were too
unlike in grain to copy those about them;
lacking the strength, the rude health, the
toughened fibre, that training for every task
which fits the Canadian to be farmer, woods¬
man or carpenter, according to season and
need.

The father was dreamily shaking his head,
lost in thought; one of the sons, elbows on
knees, gazed wonderingly at the palms of his
delicate hands, calloused by the rough work of
the fields. All three seemed to be turning
over and over in their minds the melancholy
balance-sheet of a failure. Those about them
were thinking: ‘Lorenzo sold his place for
more than it was worth; they have but little
money left and are in hard case; men like
these are not built for living on the land.’

Madame Chapdelaine, partly in pity and
partly for the honour of farming, let fall a few
encouraging words : ‘It is something of a
struggle at the beginning — if you are not used

178

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

to it; but when your land is in better order
you will see that life becomes easier/

‘It is a queer thing,’ said Conrad Neron,
‘how every man finds it equally hard to rest
content. Here are three who left their homes
and came this long way to settle and farm, and
here am I always saying to myself that noth¬
ing would be so pleasant as to sit quietly in an
office all the day, a pen behind my ear, shel¬
tered from cold wind and hot sun.’

‘Everyone to his own notion,’ declared
Lorenzo Surprenant, with unbiassed mind.

‘And your notion is not to stick in Honfleur
sweating over the stumps,’ added Racicot
with a loud laugh.

‘You are quite right there, and I make no
bones about it; that sort of thing would never
have suited me. These men here bought my
land — a good farm, and no one can gainsay it.
They wanted to buy a farm and I sold them
mine. But as for myself, I am well enough
where I am, and have no wish to return.’

Madame Chapdelaine shook her head.
There is no better life than the life of a far¬
mer who has good health and owes no debts.

A TRANSLATION

179

He is a free man, has no boss, owns his beasts,
works for his own profit . . . The finest life
there is !’

T hear them all say that,’ Lorenzo retorted,
‘one is free, his own master. And you
seem to pity those who work in factories be¬
cause they have a boss, and must do as they
are told. Free — on the land — come now!’
He spoke defiantly, with more and more ani¬
mation.

‘There is no man in the world less free
than a farmer . . . When you tell of those
who have succeeded, who are well provided with
everything needful on a farm, who have had
better luck than others, you say: — “Ah, what
a fine life they lead! They are comfortably
off, own good cattle.” That is not how to put
it. The truth is that their cattle own them.
In all the world there is no “boss” who behaves
as stupidly as the beasts you favour. Pretty
nearly every day they give you trouble or do
you some mischief. Now it is a skittish horse
that runs away or lashes out with his heels;
then it is a cow, however good-tempered, that
won’t keep still to be milked and tramples on

180

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

your toes when the flies annoy her. And even
if by good fortune they don’t hurt you, they
are forever finding a way to destroy your com¬
fort and to vex you . .

‘I know how it is; I was brought up on a
farm. And you, most of you farmers, know
how it is too. All the morning you have
worked hard, and go to your house for dinner
and a little rest. Then, before you are well
seated at table, a child is yelling : — “The cows
are over the fence;” or “The sheep are in the
crop,” and everyone jumps up and runs, think¬
ing of the oats or the barley it has been such a
trouble to raise, that these miserable fools are
ruining. The men dash about brandishing
sticks till they are out of breath; the women
stand screaming in the farm-yard. And when
you have managed to drive the cows or the
sheep into their paddock and put up the rails,
you get back to the house nicely “rested” to
find the pea-soup cold and full of flies, the pork
under the table gnawed by dogs and cats, and
you eat what you can lay your hands on,
watching for the next trick the wretched ani¬
mals are getting ready to play on you.’

A TRANSLATION

181

‘You are their slaves; that’s what you are.
You tend them, you clean them, you gather up
their dung as the poor do the rich man’s
crumbs. It is you who must keep them alive
by hard work, because the earth is miserly and
the summer so short. That is the way of it,
and there is no help, as you cannot get on
without them; but for cattle there would
be no living on the land. But even if you
could . . . even if you could . . . still would
you have other masters: the summer, begin¬
ning too late and ending too soon ; the winter,
eating up seven long months of the year and
bringing in nothing; drought and rain which
always come just at the wrong moment . . .’

‘In the towns these things do not matter;
but here you have no defence against them
and they do you hurt; and I have not taken
into account the extreme cold, the badness of
the roads, the loneliness of being far away from
everything, with no amusements. Life is one
kind of hardship on top of another from begin¬
ning to end. It is often said that only those
make a real success who are born and brought
up on the land, and of course that is true; as

182

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

for the people in the cities, small danger that
they would ever be foolish enough to put up
with such a way of living/

He spoke with heat and volubly — a man of
the town who talks every day with his equals,
reads the papers, hears public speakers. The
listeners, of a race easily moved by words,
were carried away by his plaints and criti¬
cisms ; the very real harshness of their lives was
presented in such a new and startling light as
to surprise even themselves.

However Madame Chapdelaine again shook
her head. ‘Do not say such things as that;
there is no happier life in the world than the
life of a farmer who owns good land.’

‘Not in these parts, Madame Chapdelaine.
You are too far north; the summer is too
short ; the grain is hardly up before the frosts
come. Each time that I return from the
States, and see the tiny wooden houses lost in
this wilderness — so far from one another that
they seem frightened at being alone — and the
woods hemming you in on every side ... By
Heaven ! I lose heart for you, I who live here
no longer, and I ask myself how it comes

A TRANSLATION

183

about that all you folk did not long ago seek
a kinder climate where you would find every¬
thing that makes for comfort, where you could
go out for a walk in the winter-time without
being in fear of death . . /

Without being in fear of death! Maria
shuddered as the thought overwhelmed her of
those dark secrets hidden beneath the everlast¬
ing green and white of the forest. Lorenzo Sur¬
prenant was right in what he had been saying ;
it was a pitiless ungentle land. The menace
lurking just outside the door — ^the cold — the
shrouding snows — the blank solitude — forced
a sudden entrance and crowded about the
stove, an evil swarm sneering presages of ill
or hovering in a yet more dreadful silence : — ■
‘Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave
and well-beloved, whom we have slain and hid¬
den in the woods ? Their souls have known how
to escape us ; but their bodies, their bodies, their
bodies, none shall ever snatch them from our
hands . .

The voice of the wind at the corners of the
house was loud with hollow laughter, and to
Maria it seemed that all gathered within the

186 MARIA CHAPDELAINE

like those of Roberval, but on fine broad as¬
phalt pavements as level as a table — ^just that
and no more, what with the lights, the electric
cars coming and going continually, the shops
and the crowds, you would find enough there to
amaze you for weeks together. And then all
the amusement one has: theatres, circuses,
illustrated papers, and places everywhere that
you can go into for a nickle — five cents — and
pass two hours laughing and crying. To
think, Maria, you do not even know what the
moving pictures are!’

He stopped for a little, reviewing in his mind
the marvels of the cinematograph, asking him¬
self whether he could hope to describe convinc-
ingty the fare it provided: — those thrilling
stories of young girls, deserted or astray, which
crowd the screen with twelve minutes of heart¬
rending misery and three of amends and
heavenly reward in an atmosphere of incred¬
ible luxury— the frenzied galloping of cow¬
boys in pursuit of Indian ravishers ; the
tremendous fusillade; the rescue at the last
conceivable second by soldiers arriving in a
whirlwind, waving triumphantly the star-

A TRANSLATION

187

spangled banner . . . after pausing in doubt
he shook his head, conscious that he had no
words to paint such glories.

They walked on snow-shoes side by side
over the snow, through the burnt lands that lie
on the Peribonka’s high bank above the fall.
Lorenzo had used no wile to secure Maria’s
company, he simply invited her before them
all, and now he told of his love in the same
straightforward practical way.

‘The first day I saw you, Maria, the very
first day . . . that is only the truth! For a
long time I had not been back in this country,
and I was thinking what a miserable place it
was to live in, that the men were a lot of simple¬
tons who had never seen anything and the girls
not nearly so quick and clever as they are
in the States . . . And then, the moment I set
eyes on you, there was I saying to myself that I
was the simpleton, for neither at Lowell nor
Boston had I ever met a girl like yourself.
When I returned I used to be thinking a dozen
times a day that some wretched farmer would
make love to you and carry you off, and every
time my heart sank. It was on your account

188

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

that I came back, Maria, came up here from
near Boston, three days’ journey! The busi¬
ness I had, I could have done it all by letter ; it
was you I wished to see, to tell you what was
in my heart to say and to hear the answer you
would give me.’

Wherever the snow was clear for a few
yards, free of dead trees and stumps, and he
could lift his eyes without fear of stumbling,
they were fixed upon Maria ; between the wool¬
len cap and the long woollen jersey curving
to her vigorous form he saw the outline of her
face, downward turned, expressing only gentle¬
ness and patience. Every glance gave fresh
reason for his love but brought him no hint of
a response.

‘This . . . this is no place for you, Maria.
The country is too rough, the work too hard ;
merely to earn one’s bread is killing toil. In
a factory over there, clever and strong as you
are, soon you would be in the way of making
nearly as much as I do ; but no need of that if
you were my wife. I earn enough for both of
us, and we should have every comfort: good
clothes to wear, a pretty flat in a brick house

A TRANSLATION

189

with gas and hot water, and all sorts of contri¬
vances you never heard of to save you labour
and worry every moment of the day. And don’t
let the idea enter your head that all the people
are English. I know many Canadian families
who work as I do or even keep shops. And
there is a splendid church with a Canadian
priest as curé — Mr. Tremblay from St. Hya¬
cinthe. You would never be lonesome . . . ’

Pausing again he surveyed the white
plain with its ragged crop of brown stumps,
the bleak plateau dropping a little farther in a
long slope to the levels of the frozen river;
meanwhile ransacking his mind for some final
persuasive word.

T hardly know what to say . . . You have
always lived here and it is not possible for you
to guess what life is elsewhere, nor would I be
able to make you understand were I to talk
forever. But I love you, Maria, I earn a
good wage and I never touch a drop. If yoti
will marry me as I ask I will take you off to
a country that will open your eyes with aston¬
ishment — a fine country, not a bit like this,
where we can live in a decent way and be happy
for the rest of our days.’

190

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Maria still was silent, and yet the sentences
of Lorenzo Surprenant beat upon her heart
as succeeding waves roll against the shore. It
was not his avowals of love, honest and sincere
though they were, but the lures he used which
tempted her. Only of cheap pleasures had he
spoken, of trivial things ministering to comfort
or vanity, but of these alone was she able to
conjure up a definite idea. All else — the dis¬
tant glamour of the city, of a life new and in¬
comprehensible to her, full in the centre of the
bustling world and no longer at its very con¬
fines — enticed her but the more in its shimmer¬
ing remoteness with the mystery of a great light
that shines from afar.

Whatsoever there may be of wonder and ex¬
hilaration in the sight and touch of the crowd ;
the rich harvests of mind and sense for which
the city dweller has bartered his rough herit¬
age of pride in the soil, Maria was dimly con¬
scious of as part of this other life in a new
world, this glorious re-birth for which she was
already yearning. But above all else, the de¬
sire was strong upon her now to flee away, to
escape.

A TRANSLATION

191

The wind from the east was driving before it
a host of melancholy snow-laden clouds.
Threateningly they swept over white ground
and sullen wood, and the earth seemed await¬
ing another fold of its winding-sheet; cypress,
spruce and hr, close side by side and motion¬
less, were passive in their attitude of uncom¬
plaining endurance. The stumps above the
snow were like floating wreckage on a dreary
sea. In all the landscape there was naught that
spoke of a spring to come — of warmth and
growth; rather did it seem a shard of some
disinherited planet under the eternal rule of
deadly cold.

All of her life had Maria known this cold,
this snow, the land’s death-like sleep, these
austere and frowning woods ; for the first time
now she viewed them with fear and hate. A
paradise surely must it be, this country to the
south where March is no longer winter and in
April the leaves are green! At mid-winter
one takes to the road without snow-shoes, un¬
clad in furs, beyond sight of the cruel forest.
And the cities . . . the pavements . . .

Questions framed themselves upon her lips.

192

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

She would know if lofty houses and shops stood
unbrokenly on both sides of the streets, as she
had been told; if the electric cars ran all the
year round; if the living was very dear . . .
And the answers to her questions would satisfy
but a little of this eager curiosity, would
scarcely have disturbed the enchanting vague¬
ness of her illusion.

She was silent however, dreading to speak
any word that might seem like the foreshadow¬
ing of a promise Though Lorenzo gazed at
her long as they walked together across the
snow, he was able to guess nothing of what was
passing in her heart.

‘You will not Have me, Maria.? You have
no liking for me, or is it, perhaps, that you
cannot make up your mind.?’ As still she gave
no reply he clung to this idea, fearing that she
might hastily refuse him.

‘No need whatever that you should say
“Yes” at once. You have not known me very
long . . . But think of what I have said to
you. I will come back, Maria. It is a long
journey and costly, but I will come. And if
only you give thought to it, you will see there

A TRANSLATION

193

is no young fellow here who could give you such
a future as I can ; because if you marry me we
shall live like decent folk, and not have to kill
ourselves tending cattle and grubbing in the
earth in this out-of-the-way corner of the
world.”

They returned to the house. Lorenzo gos¬
siped a little about his journey to the States,
where the springtime would have arrived before
him, of the plentiful and well-paid work to
which his good clothes and prosperous air bore
witness. Then he bade them adieu, and Maria,
whose eyes had carefully been avoiding his,
seated herself by the window, and watched the
night and the snow falling together as she pon¬
dered in the deep unrest of her spirit.

CHAPTER XIII.

No one asked Maria any questions that evening,
or on the following evenings ; but some member
of the family must have told Eutrope Gagnon
of Lorenzo SuprenanPs visit and his evident
intentions, for the next Sunday after dinner
came Eutrope in turn, and Maria heard an¬
other suitor declare his love.

François had come in the full tide of sum¬
mer, from the land of mystery at the head¬
waters of the rivers ; the memory of his artless
words brought back the dazzling sunshine,
the ripened blueberries and the last blossoms
of the laurel fading in the undergrowth;
after him appeared Lorenzo Surprenant offer¬
ing other gifts; visions of beautiful distant
cities, of a life abounding in unknown won¬
ders. When Eutrope spoke, it was in a shame¬
faced halting way, as though he foresaw defeat,
194

A TRANSLATION

195

knowing full well that he bore little in his hands
wherewith to tempt her.

Boldly enough he asked Maria to walk with
him, but when they were dressed and outside
the door, they saw that snow was falling.
Maria stood dubiously on the step, a hand
on the latch as though she would return ; and
Eutrope, unwilling to lose his chance, began
forthwith to speak — hastening as though doubt¬
ful that he would be able to say all that was in
his mind.

‘You know very well, Maria, how I feel to¬
ward you. I said nothing before as my farm
was not so forward that we could live there
comfortably, and moreover I guessed that you
liked François Paradis better than me. But
as François is no longer here, and this young
fellow from the States is courting you, I said
to myself that I, too, might try my fortune. . . ’

The snow was coming now in serried flakes,
fluttering whitely for an instant against the
darkly-encircling forest, on the way to join that
other snow with which five months of winter
had burdened the earth.

‘It is true enough that I am not rich ; but 1

196

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

have two lots of my own, paid for out and out,
and you know the soil is good. I shall work on
it all spring, take the stumps out of the large
field below the ridge of rock, put up some
fences, and by May there will be a fine big field
ready for seeding. I shall sow a hundred and
thirty bushels, Maria, — a hundred and thirty
bushels of wheat, barley and oats, without
reckoning an acre of mixed grain for the
cattle. All the seed, the best seed-grain, I am
going to buy at Roberval, settling for it on the
spot ... I have the money put aside; I shall
pay cash, without running into debt to a soul,
and if only we have an average season there will
be a fine crop to harvest. Just think of it,
Maria, a hundred and thirty bushels of good
seed in first-rate land! And in the summer,
before the haymaking, and then again before the
harvest, will be the best chance for building a
nice tight warm little house, all of tamarack.
I have the wood ready, cut and piled behind
my barn; my brother will help me, perhaps
Esdras and Da’Bé as well, when they get
home. Next winter I shall go to the shanties,
taking a horse with me, and in the spring I

A TRANSLATION

197

shall bring back not less than two hundred dol¬
lars in my pocket. Then, should you be
willing to wait so long for me, would be the
time . .

Maria was leaning against the door, a hand
still upon the latch, her eyes turned away.
Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to
offer her: after a year of waiting that she
should become his wife, and live as now she
was doing in another wooden house on another
half-cleared farm . . . Should do the household
work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the
stable when her man was away — labour in the
fields perhaps, since she was strong and there
would be but two of them . . . Should spend
her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patch¬
ing old clothes . . . Now and then in summer
resting for half an hour, seated on the door¬
step, looking across their scant fields girt by the
eternally frowning woods ; or in winter thawing
a little patch with her breath on the window-
pane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow fal¬
ling on the wintry earth and the forest . . .
The forest . . . Always the inscrutable, inimi¬
cal forest, with a host of dark things hiding
there — closed round them with a savage grip

198

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

that must be loosened little by little, year by
year ; a few acres won each spring and autumn
as the years pass, throughout all the long days
of a dull harsh life . . . No, that she could
not face . . .

‘I know well enough that we shall have to
work hard at first,’ Eutrope went on, ‘but you
have courage, Maria, and are well used to
labour, as I am. I have always worked hard ;
no one can say that I was ever lazy, and
if only you will marry me it will be my joy to
toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriv¬
ing place of it, so that we shall be in comfort
before old age comes upon us. I do not touch
drink, Maria, and truly I love you . . .’

His voice quivered, and he put out his hand
toward the latch to take hers, or perhaps to
hinder her from opening the door and leaving
him without his answer.

‘My affection for you ... of that I am
not able to speak . . .’

Never a word did she utter in reply. Once
more a young man was telling his love, was
placing in her hands all he had to give; and
once more she could but hearken in mute em-

A TRANSLATION

199

barrassment, only saved from awkwardness by
her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls
had thought her stupid, when she was but
honest and truthful ; very close to nature which
takes no account of words. In other days when
life was simpler than nowit is, when young men
paid their court — masterfully and yet half
bashfully — to some deep-bosomed girl in the
ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard
nature’s imperious command, she must have
listened thus, in silence ; less attentive to their
pleading than to the inner voice, guarding her¬
self by distance against too ardent a wooing,
whilst she waited. . . . The three lovers
of Maria Chapdelaine were not drawn to
her by any charm of gracious speech, but by
her sheer comeliness, and the transparent
honest heart dwelling in her bosom ; when they
spoke to her of love she was true to herself,
steadfast and serene, saying no word where
none was needful to be said, and for this they
loved her only the more.

‘This young fellow from the States was ready
with fine speeches, but you must not be carried
away by them . . He caught a hint of dis¬
sent and changed his tone.

200

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘Of course you are quite free to choose, and
I have not a word to say against him. But
you would be happier here, Maria, amongst
people like yourself.’

Through the falling snow Maria gazed at
the rude structure of planks, between stable
and barn, which her father and brother had
thrown together five years before ; unsightly and
squalid enough it appeared, now that her fancy
had begun to conjure up the stately buildings
of the town. Close and ill-smelling, the floor
littered with manure and foul straw, the pump
in one corner that was so hard to work and set
the teeth on edge with its griding ; the weather¬
beaten outside; buffeted by wind and never-
ending snow — sign and symbol of what await¬
ed her were she to marry one like Eutrope
Gagnon, and accept as her lot a lifetime of rude
toil in this sad and desolate land . . . She
shook her head.

T cannot answer, Eutrope, either yes or no ;
not just now. I have given no promise. You
must wait.’

It was more than she had said to Lorenzo
Surprenant, and yet Lorenzo had gone away

A TRANSLATION

201

with hope in his heart, while Eutrope felt that
he had made his throw and lost. Departing
alone, the snow soon hid him. She entered
the house.

March dragged through its melancholy days ;
cold winds swept the gray clouds back and forth
across the sky, and swept the snow hither and
thither; one must needs consult the calendar
of the Roberval grain merchant to get an ink¬
ling that spring was drawing near.

Succeeding days were to Maria like those
that had gone before, each one bringing its fam¬
iliar duties and the same routine ; but the even¬
ings were different, and were filled with path¬
etic strivings to think. Beyond doubt her pa¬
rents had guessed the truth ; but they were un¬
willing to force her reserve with their advice,
nor did she seek it. She knew that it rested with
her alone to make a choice, to settle the future
course of her life, and she felt like a child at
school, standing on a platform before watchful
eyes, bidden to find by herself the answer to
some knotty question.

And this was her problem: when a girl is

202

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

grown to womanhood, when she is good-look¬
ing, healthy and strong, clever in all that per¬
tains to the household and the farm, young
men come and ask her to marry, and she must
say ‘Yes’ to this one and ‘No’ to another.

If only François Paradis had not vanished
forever in the great lonely woods, all were then
so plain. No need to ask herself v/hat she ought
to do; she would have gone straight to him,
guided by a wise instinct that she might not
gainsay, sure of doing what was right as a child
that obeys a command. But François was
gone; neither in the promised springtime nor
ever again to return, and the curé of St. Henri
forbade regrets that would prolong the await¬
ing.

Ah, dear God! How happy had been the
early days of this awaiting I As week followed
week something quickened in her heart and
shot upward, like a rich and beauteous sheaf
whose opening ears bend low under their weight.
Happiness beyond any dream came dancing
to her . . . No, it was stronger and keener
yet, this joy of hers. It had been a great
light shining in the twilight of a lonely land.

A TRANSLATION

203

a beacon toward which one journeys, forgetful
of the tears that were about to flow, saying with
glad defiance: T knew it well — knew that
somewhere on the earth was such a thing as
this . . / It was over. Yes, the gleam was
gone. Henceforth must she forget that once it
had shone upon her path, and grope through
the dark with faltering steps.

Chapdelaine and Tit’Bé were smoking in
silence by the stove ; the mother knitted stock¬
ings; Chien, stretched out with his head be¬
tween his paws, blinked sleepily in enjoyment
of the good warmth. Telesphore had dozed off
with the catechism open on his knees, and
the little Alma Rose, not yet in bed, was hover¬
ing in doubt between the wish to draw attention
to her brother’s indolence, and a sense of shame
at thus betraying him.

Maria looked down again, took her work in
hand, and her simple mind pursued a little fur¬
ther its puzzling train of thought . When a girl
does not feel, or feels no longer, that deep mys¬
terious impulse toward a man singled out from
all the rest of the world, what is left to guide
her.? For what things should she seek in her

204

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

marriage? For a satisfying life, surely; to make
a happy home for herself . . ,

Her parents would like her to marry Eutrope
Gagnon — that she felt — because she would live
near them, and again because this life upon the
land was the only one they knew, and they
naturally thought it better than any other.
Eutrope was a fine fellow, hard-working and
of kindly disposition, and he loved her; but
Lorenzo Surprenant also loved her; he, like¬
wise, was steady and a good worker ; he was a
Canadian at heart, not less than those amongst
whom she lived ; he went to church . . . And
he offered as his splendid gift a world dazzling
to the eye, all the wonders of the city. He
would rescue her from this oppression of frozen
earth and gloomy forest.

She could not as yet resolve to say to her¬
self: ‘I will marry Lorenzo Surprenant,’ but
her heart had made its choice. That cruel
north-west wind that heaped the snow above
François Paradis at the foot of some desolate
cypress, bore also to her on its wings the frown
and the harshness of the country wherein she
dwelt, and filled her with hate of the northern

A TRANSLATION

205

winter, the cold, the whitened ground and the
loneliness, of that boundless forest unheed¬
ful of the destinies of men where every
melancholy tree is fit to stand in a home
of the dead. Love — all-compelling love — for a
brief space had dwelt within her heart . . .
Mighty flame, scorching and bright, quenched
now, and never to revive. It left her spirit
empty and yearning ; she was fain to seek for¬
getfulness and cure in that life afar, among
the myriad paler lights of the city.

CHAPTER XIV.

There came an evening in April when
Madame Chapdelaine would not take her place
at the supper table with the others.

‘There are pains through my body and I
have no appetite/ she said, T must have
strained myself today lifting a bag of flour
when I was making bread. Now something
catches me in the back, and I am not hungry.’

No one answered her. Those living shel¬
tered lives take quick alarm when the mechan¬
ism of one of their number goes wrong, but
people who wrestle with the earth for a living
feel little surprise if their labours are too much
for them now and then, and the body gives
way in some fibre.

While father and children supped, Madame
Chapdelaine sat very still in her chair beside
206

A TRANSLATION

207

the stove. She drew her breath hard, and her
broad face was working.

T am going to bed,’ she said presently. ‘A
good night’s sleep, and tomorrow morning I
shall be all right again ; have no doubt of that.
You will see to the baking, Maria.’

And indeed in the morning she was up at
her usual hour, but when she had made the
batter for the pancakes pain overcame her, and
she had to lie down again. She stood for a
minute beside the bed, with both hands pressed
against her back, and made certain that the
daily tasks would be attended to.

‘You will give the men their food, Maria,
and your father will lend you a hand at milk¬
ing the cows if you wish it. I am not good for
anything this morning.’

Tt will be all right, mother; it will be all
right. Take it quietly; we shall have no
trouble.’

For two days she kept her bed, with a watch¬
ful eye over everything, directing all the house¬
hold affairs.

‘Don’t be in the least anxious,’ her husband
urged again and again. ‘There is hardly

208

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

anything to be done in the house beyond the
cooking, and Maria is quite fit to look after that
— everything else too, by thunder ! She is not a
little child any longer, and is as capable as
yourself. Lie then quietly, without stirring;
and be easy in your mind, instead of tossing
about all the time under the blankets and mak¬
ing yourself worse.’

On the third day she gave up thinking about
the cares of the house and began to bemoan
herself.

‘Oh my God!’ she wailed. ‘I have pains
all over my body, and my head is burning. I
think that I am going to die.’

Her husband tried to cheer her with his
clumsy pleasantries. ‘You are going to die
when the good God wills it, and according to
my way of thinking that will not be for a while
yet. What would He be doing with you.?
Heaven is all cluttered with old women, and
down here we have only the one, and she is
able to make herself a bit useful, every now
and then . . .’ But he was beginning to feel
anxious, and took counsel with his daughter.

‘I could put the horse in and go as far as La

A TRANSLATION

209

Pipe,’ he suggested. Tt may be that they
have some medicine for this sickness at the
store; or I might talk things over with the
curé, and he would tell me what to do.’

Before they had made up their minds night
had fallen, and Tit’Bé, who had been at Eu-
trope Gagnon’s helping him to saw his firewood,
came back bringing Eutrope along with him.

‘Eutrope has a remedy,’ said he. They all
gathered round Eutrope, who took a little tin
box from his pocket and opened it deliberately.

‘This is what I have,’ he announced rather
dubiously. ‘They are little pills. When my
brother was bad with his kidneys three years
ago he saw an advertisement in a paper about
these pills, and it said they were the proper
thing, so he sent the money for a box, and he
declares it is a good medicine. Of course his
trouble did not leave him at once, but he says
that this did him good. It comes from the
States . . .’

Without word said they looked at the little
gray pills rolling about on the bottom of the
box ... A remedy compounded by some man
in a distant land famed for his wisdom . . .

210

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

felt the awe of the savage for his broth of
herbs simmered on a night of the full moon
beneath the medicine-man’s incantations.

Maria asked doubtfully: ‘Is it certain that
her trouble has only to do with the kidneys?’

‘I thought it was just that, from what
Tit’Bé told me.’

A motion of Chapdelaine’s hand eked out
his words: ‘She strained herself lifting a bag
of flour, as she says; and now she has pains
everywhere. How can we tell . . .’

‘The newspaper that spoke of this med¬
icine,’ Eutrope Gagnon went on, ‘put it that
whenever a person falls sick and is in pain
it is always the kidneys ; and for trouble in the
kidneys these pills here are first-rate. That
is what the paper said, and my brother as
well.’

‘Even if they are not for this very sickness,’
said Tit’Bé deferentially, ‘they are a remedy
all the same.’

‘She suffers, that is one thing certain; we
cannot let her go on like this.’

They drew near the bed where the sick
woman was moaning and breathing heavily.

A TRANSLATION

211

attempting from time to time to make slight
movements which were followed by sharper
cries.

‘Eutrope has brought you a cure, Laura.’

T have no faith in your cures,’ she groaned
out. But yet she was ready to look at the
little gray pills ever running round in the tin
box as if they were alive.

‘My brother took some of these three years
ago when he had the kidney trouble so badly
that he was hardly able to work at all, and he
says that they cured him. It is a fine remedy,
Madame Chapdelaine, there is not a question of
it !’ His former doubts had vanished in speech
and he felt wholly confident. ‘This is going
to cure you, Madame Chapdelaine, as surely
as the good God is above us. It is a medicine
of the very first class ; my brother had it sent
expressly from the States. You may be sure
that you would never find a medicine like this
in the store at La Pipe.’

‘It cannot make her worse.?’ Maria asked,
some doubt lingering. ‘It is not a poison, or
anything of that sort. ?’

With one voice, in an indignant tone, the

212

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

three men protested: ‘Do harm? Tiny pills
no bigger than that !’

‘My brother took nearly a box of them, and
according to his account it was only good they
did him/

When Eutrope departed he left the box of
pills ; the sick woman had not yet agreed to try
them, but her objections grew weaker at their
urging. In the middle of the night she took a
couple, and two more in the morning, and as
the hours passed they all waited in confidence
for the virtue of the medicine to declare itself.
But towards midday they had to bow to the
facts : she was no easier and did not cease her
moaning. By evening the box was empty, and
at the falling of night her groans were filling
the household with anguished distress, all the
keener as they had no medicine now in which
to place their trust.

Maria was up several times in the night,
aroused by her mother’s more piercing cries;
she always found her lying motionless on her
side, and tnis position seemed to increase the
suffering and the stiffness, so that her groans
were pitiful to hear.

A TRANSLATION

213

What ails you, mother? Are you not
feeling any better?’

‘Ah God, how I suffer! How I do suffer!
I cannot stir myself, not the least bit, and even
so the pain is as bad as ever. Give me some
cold water, Maria; I have the most terrible
thirst.’

Several times Maria gave her mother water,
but at last she became afraid. ‘Maybe it is
not good for you to drink so much. Try to
bear the thirst for a little.’

‘But I cannot bear it I tell you — the
thirst and the pain all through my body, and
my head that burns like fire . . . My God!
It is certain that I am to die.’

A little before daylight they both fell asleep ;
but soon Maria was awakened by her father
who laid his hand upon her shoulder and whis¬
pered: — ‘I am going to harness the horse to
go to Mistook for the doctor, and on the way
through La Pipe I shall also speak to the curé.
It is heart-breaking to hear her moan like this;’

Her eyes open in the ghostly dawn, Maria
gave ear to the sounds of his departure: the
banging of the stable door against the wall;

214

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

the horse’s hoofs thudding on the wood of the
alley; muffled commands to Charles Eugene:
‘Hold up, there ! Back . . . Back up ! Whoa !’
Then the tinkle of the sleigh-bells. In the
silence that followed, the sick woman groaned
two or three times in her sleep ; Maria watched
the wan light stealing into the house and
thought of her father’s journey, trying to
reckon up the distances he must travel.

From their house to Honfleur, eight miles;
from Honfleur to La Pipe, six. There her
father would speak with the curé, and then
pursue his way to Mistook. She corrected
herself, and for the ancient Indian name that
the people of the country use, gave it the official
one bestowed in baptism by the church — St.
Coeur de Marie. From La Pipe to St. Coeur
de Marie, eight miles . . . Eight and six and
then eight. Growing confused, she said to her¬
self : — ‘Anyway it is far, and the roads will be
heavy.’

Again she felt affrighted at their loneliness,
which once hardly gave her a thought. All
was well enough when people were in health
and merry, and one had no need of help ; but

A TRANSLATION

215

with trouble or sickness the woods around
seemed to shut them cruelly away from all suc¬
cour — the woods where horses sink to the chest
in snow, where storms smother one in mid-
April

The mother strove to turn in her sleep,
waked with an anguished cry, and the contin¬
ual moaning began anew. Maria rose and sat
by the bed, thinking of the long day just begin¬
ning in which she would have neither help nor
counsel.

All the dragging hours were burdened with
lamentable sound; the groaning from the bed
where the sick woman lay never ceased, and
haunted the narrow wooden dwelling. Now
and then some household noise broke in upon
it: the clashing of plates, the clang of the
opened stove door, the sound of feet on the
planking, Tit’Bé stealing into the house, clum¬
sy and anxious, to ask for news.

Ts she no better.?’

Maria answered by a movement of the head.
They both stood gazing for a time at the
motionless figure under the woollen blankets,
giving ear to the sounds of distress ; then Tit’Bé

216

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

departed to his small outdoor duties. When
Maria had put the house in order she took up
her patient watching, and the sick woman’s
agonizing wails seemed to reproach her.

From hour to hour she kept reckoning the
times and the distances. ‘My father should
not be far from St. Coeur de Marie ... If
the doctor is there they will rest the horse for
a couple of hours and come back together. But
the roads must be very bad; at this time, in
the spring, they are sometimes hardly pas¬
sable.’

And then a little later: — ‘They should have
left; perhaps in going through La Pipe they
will stop to speak to the curé; perhaps again
he may have started as soon as he heard, with¬
out waiting for them. In that case he might
be here at any moment.’

But the fall of night brought no one, and it
was only about seven o’clock that the sound
of sleigh-bells was heard, and her father and
the doctor arrived. The latter came into the
house alone, put his bag on the table and be¬
gan to pull off his overcoat, grumbling all the
while.

A TRANSLATION

217

‘With the roads in this condition,’ said he,
it is no small affair to get about and visit the
sick. And as for you folks, you seem to have
hidden yourselves as far in the woods as you
could. Great Heavens! You might very well
all die without a soul coming to help you.’

After warming himself for a little while at
the stove he approached the bedside. ‘Well,
good mother, so we have taken the notion to
be sick, just like people who have money to
spend on such things 1’

But after a brief examination he ceased to
jest, saying: — ‘She really is sick, I believe.’

It was with no affectation that he spoke in
the fashion of the peasantry; his grandfather
and his father were tillers of the soil, and he
had gone straight from the farm to study med¬
icine in Quebec, amongst other young fellows
for the most part like himself — grandsons, if
not sons of farmers — who had all clung to the
plain country manners and the deliberate
speech of their fathers. He was tall and heav¬
ily built, with a grizzled moustache, and his
large face wore the slightly aggrieved expression
of one whose native cheerfulness is being con-

218

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

tinually dashed through listening to the tale of
others’ ills, to which he is bound to show a
decent sympathy.

Chapdelaine came in when he had unhar¬
nessed and fed the horse. He and his chil¬
dren sat at a little distance while the doctor
was going through his programme.

Every one of them was thinking : — ‘Presently
we shall know what is the matter, and the
doctor will give her the right medicines.’ But
when the examination was ended, instead of
turning to the bottles in his bag, he seemed
uncertain and began to ask interminable ques¬
tions. How had it happened, and where, par¬
ticularly, did she feel pain . . . Had she ever
before suffered from the same trouble . . . The
answers did not seem to enlighten him very
much ; then he turned to the sick woman her¬
self, only to receive confused statements and
complaints.

Tf it is just a wrench that she has given
herself,’ at length he announced, ‘she will get
well without any meddling ; there is nothing for
her to do but to stay quietly in bed. But if
there is some injury within, to the kidneys or

A TRANSLATION

219

another organ, it may be a grave affair/ He
was conscious that his state of doubt was disap¬
pointing to the Chapdelaines, and was anxious
to restore his medical reputation.

‘Internal lesions are serious things, and often
one cannot detect them. The wisest man in
the world could tell you no more than I. We
shall have to wait . . . But perhaps it is not
that we have to deal with.’ After some further
investigation he shook his head. ‘Of course I
can give something that will keep her from
suffering like this.’

The leather bag now disclosed its wonder¬
working phials; fifteen drops of a yellowish
drug were diluted with two fingers of water,
and the sick woman, lifted up in bed, managed
to swallow this with sharp cries of pain. Then
there was apparently nothing more to be done ;
the men lit their pipes, and the doctor, with his
feet against the stove, held forth as to his pro¬
fessional labours and the cures he had wrought.

‘Illnesses like these,’ said he, ‘where one
cannot discover precisely what is the matter,
are more baffling to a doctor than the gravest
disorders — like pneumonia now, or even ty-

220

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

phoid fever which carry off three-quarters of
the people hereabouts who do not die of old
age. Well, typhoid and pneumonia, I cure
these every month in the year. You know
Viateur Tremblay, the postmaster at St.
Henri . . .’

He seemed a little hurt that Madame Chap-
delaine should be the victim of an obscure mal¬
ady, hard to diagnose, and had not been taken
down with one of the two complaints he was
accustomed to treat with such success, and
he gave an account by chapter and verse of the
manner in which he had cured the postmaster
of St. Henri. From that they passed on to the
country news — news carried by word of mouth
from house to house around Lake St. John,
and greeted a thousandfold more eagerly than
tidings of wars and famines, since the gossipers
always manage to connect it with friend or
relative in a country where all ties of kinship,
near or far, are borne scrupulously in mind.

Adadame Chapdelaine ceased moaning and
seemed to be asleep. The doctor, considering
that he had done all that was expected of him,
for the evening at least, knocked the ashes out
of his pipe and rose to go.

A TRANSLATION

221

‘I shall sleep at Honfleur,’ said he, T sup¬
pose your horse is fit to take me so far? There
is no need for you to come, I know the road.
I shall stay with Ephrem Surprenant, and
come back in the morning.’

Chapdelaine was a little slow to make reply,
recalling the stiff day’s work his old beast
had already accomplished, but at the end he
went out to harness Charles Eugene once more.
In a few minutes the doctor was on the road,
leaving the family to themselves as usual.

A great stillness reigned in the house. The
comfortable thought was v/ith them all : — ‘Any¬
way the medicine he has given her is a good
one; she groans no longer.’ But scarce an
hour had gone by before the sick woman ceased
to feel the effect of the too feeble drug, became
conscious again, tried to turn herself in bed
and screamed out with pain. They were all up
at once and crowding about her in their con¬
cern; she opened her eyes, and after groaning
in an agonized way began to weep unrestrain¬
edly.

‘O Samuel, I am dying, there can be no
doubt of it.’

222

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘No! No! You must not think that.’

‘Yes, I know that I am dying. I feel it.
The doctor is only an old fool, and he cannot
tell what to do. He is not even able to say what
the trouble is, and the medicine he gave me is
useless ; it has done me no good. I tell you I
am dying.’

The failing words were hindered with her
groaning, and tears coursed down the heavy
cheeks. Husband and children looked at her,
struck to the very earth with grief. The foot¬
step of death was sounding in the house. They
knew themselves cut off from all the world,
helpless, remote, without even a horse to bring
them succour. The cruel treachery of it all
held them speechless and transfixed, with
streaming eyes.

In their midst appeared Eutrope Gagnon.

‘And I who was thinking to find her almost
well. This doctor, now . . .’

Chapdelaine broke out, quite beside him¬
self: — ‘This doctor is not a bit of use, and I
shall tell him so plainly, myself. He came here,
he gave her a drop of some miserable stuff worth
nothing at all in the bottom of a cup, and he

A TRANSLATION

223

is off to sleep in the village as if his pay was
earned! Not a thing has he done but tire out
my horse, but he shall not have a copper from
me 5 not a single copper . .

Eutrope’s face was very grave, and he shook
his head as he declared: — ‘Neither have I any
faith in doctors. Now if we had only thought
of fetching a bone-setter — such a man as Tit »
Sèbe of St. Felicien . . .’ Every face was
turned to him and the tears ceased flowing.

‘Tit’Sèbel’ exclaimed Maria. ‘And you
think he could help in a case like this ?” Both
Eutrope and Chapdelaine hastened to avow
their trust in him.

‘There is no doubt whatever that Tit’Sèbe
can make people well. He was never through
the schools, but he knows how to cure. You
heard of Nazaire Gaudreau who fell from the
top of a barn and broke his back. The doctors
came to see him, and the best they could do was
to give the Latin name for his hurt and say
that he was going to die. Then they went and
fetched Tit’Sèbe, and Tit’Sèbe cured him.’
Every one of them knew the healer’s repute
and hope sprang up again in their hearts.

224

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘Tit’Sèbe is a first-rate man, and a man who
knows how to make people well. Moreover he
is not greedy for money. You go and you fetch
him, you pay for his time, and he cures you.
It was he who put little Romeo Boilly on his
legs again after being run over by a wagon
loaded with planks.’

The sick woman had relapsed into stupor,
and was moaning feebly with her eyes closed.

T will go and get him if you like,’ suggested
Eutrope.

‘But what will you do for a horse?’ asked
Maria. ‘The doctor has Charles Eugene at
Honfleur.’

Chapdelaine clenched his fist in wrath and
swore through his teeth : — ‘The old rascal !’

Eutrope thought a moment before speaking.
‘It makes no difference. I will go just the same.
If I walk to Honfleur, I shall easily find some¬
one there who will lend me a horse and sleigh
— Racicot, or perhaps old Neron.’

‘It is thirty-five miles from here to St.
Felicien and the roads are heavy.’

‘I will go just the same.’

He departed forthwith, thinking as he went

A TRANSLATION

225

at a jog-trot over the snow, of the grateful look
that Maria had given him. The family made
ready for the night, computing meanwhile
these new distances . . . Seventy miles there
and back . . . Roads deep in snow. The lamp
was left burning, and till morning the voice
from the bed was never hushed. Sometimes
it was sharp with pain; sometimes it weakly
gasped for breath. Two hours after daylight
the doctor and the curé of St. Henri appeared
together.

‘It was impossible for me to come sooner,’
the curé explained, ‘but I am here at last, and I
picked up the doctor in the village.’ They
sat at the bedside and talked in low tones. The
doctor made a fresh examination, but it was
the curé who told the result of it. ‘There is
little one can say. She does not seem any
worse, but this is not an ordinary sickness.
It is best that I should confess her and give her
absolution ; then we shall both go away and be
back again the day after to-morrow.’

He returned to the bed, and the others went
over and sat by the window. For some min¬
utes the two voices were heard in question and

226

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

response ; the one feeble and broken by suffer¬
ing; the other confident, grave, scarcely
lowered for the solemn interrogation. After
some inaudible words a hand was raised in
a gesture which instantly bowed the heads of
all those in the house. The priest rose.

Before departing the doctor gave Maria a
little bottle with his instructions. ‘Only if she
should suffer greatly, so that she cries out, and
never more than fifteen drops at a time. And
do not let her have any cold water to drink.’

She saw them to the door, the bottle in her
hand. Before getting into the sleigh the curé
took Maria aside and spoke a few words to her.
‘ Doctors do what they can,’ said he in a sim¬
ple unaffected way, ‘but only God Himself has
knowledge of disease. Pray with all your heart,
and I shall say a mass for her to-morrow — a
high mass with music, you understand.’

All day long Maria strove to stay the hidden
advances of the disorder with her prayers, and
every time that she returned to the bed-side it
was with a half hope that a miracle had been
wrought, that the sick woman would cease from
her groaning, sleep for a few hours and awake

A TRANSLATION

227

restored to health. It was not so to be; the
moaning ceased not, but towards evening it
died away to sighing, continual and profound
— nature’s protest against a burden too heavy
to be borne, or the slow inroad of death-dealing
poison.

About midnight came Eutrope Gagnon,
bringing Tit’Sebe the bone-setter. He was a
little, thin, sad-faced man with very kind eyes.
As always when called to a sick-bed, he wore
his clothes of ceremony, of dark well-worn
cloth, which he bore with the awkwardness of
the peasant in Sunday attire. But the strong
brown hands beyond the sleeves moved in a
way to inspire confidence. They passed over
the limbs and body of Madame Chapdelaine
with the most delicate care, nor did they draw
from her a single cry of pain ; thereafter he sat
for a long time motionless beside the couch,
looking at her as though awaiting guidance
from a source beyond himself. But when at
last he broke the silence it was to say: ‘Have
you sent for the curé? . . . He has been
here. And will he return? To-morrow; that
is well.’

228

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

After another pause he made his frank
avowal: — ‘There is nothing I can do for her.
Something has gone wrong within, about
which I know nothing ; were there broken bones
I could have healed them. I should only have
had to feel them with my hands, and then the
good God would have told me what to do and
I should have cured her. But in this sickness
of hers I have no skill. I might indeed put a
blister on her back, and perhaps that would
draw away the blood and relieve her for a
time. Or I could give her a draught made from
beaver kidneys; it is useful when the kidneys
are affected, as is well known. But I think
that neither the blister nor the draught would
work a cure.’

His speech was so honest and straightfor¬
ward that he made them one and all feel what
manner of thing was a disorder of the human
frame — the strangeness and the terror of what
is passing behind the closed door, which those
without can only fight clumsily as they grope
in dark uncertainty.

‘She will die if that be God’s pleasure.’

Maria broke into quiet tears ; her father, not

A TRANSLATION

229

yet understanding, sat with his mouth half¬
open, and neither moved nor spoke. The bone-
setter, this sentence given, bowed his head and
held his pitiful eyes for long upon the sick wo¬
man. The browned hands that now availed him
not lay upon his knees ; leaning forward a little,
his back bent, the gentle sad spirit seemed in
silent communion with its maker : ‘Thou hast
bestowed upon me the gift of healing bones
that are broken, and I have healed them; but
Thou hast denied me power over such ills as
these ; so must I let this poor woman die.’

For the first time now the deep marks of
illness upon the mother’s face appeared to
husband and children as more than the passing
traces of suffering, as imprints from the hand
of death. The hard-drawn breath rattling in
her throat no longer betokened conscious pain,
but was the last blind remonstrance of the body
rent by nearing dissolution.

‘You do not think she will die before the
curé comes back?’ Maria asked.

Tit’Sèbe’s head and hand showed that he
was helpless to answer. ‘I cannot tell . . .
If your horse is able you would do well to seek
him with the daylight.’

230

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Their eyes searched the window, as yet only
a square of darkness, and then returned to her
who lay upon the bed . . . But five days ago
a hearty, high-spirited woman, in full health
of mind and body ... It could not be that she
was to die so soon as that . . . But knowing
now the sad inevitableness, every glance found
a subtle change, some fresh token that this bed¬
ridden woman groaning in her blindness was
no more the wife and mother they had known
so long.

Half an hour went by ; after casting his eyes
towards the window Chapdelaine arose hur¬
riedly, saying: — T am going to put the horse
in.’

Tit’Sèbe nodded. ‘That is well; you had
better harness; it is near day.’

‘Yes. I am going to put the horse in,’
Chapdelaine repeated. But at the moment of
his departure it swept over him suddenly that
in going to bring the Blessed Sacrament he
was about to fulfil a sad and final errand, sig¬
nificant of death. The thought held him
still irresolute. ‘I am going to put the horse

A TRANSLATION

231

in.’ Shifting from foot to foot, he gave a last
look at his wife and at length went out.

Not long after the coming of day the wind
rose, and soon was sounding hoarsely about the
house. Tt is from the nor’west; there will be
a blow,’ said Tit’Sebe.

Maria looked toward the window and sighed.
‘Only two days ago snow fell, and now it will
be raised and drift. The roads were heavy
enough before; father and the curé are going
to have trouble getting through.’

But the bone-setter shook his head. ‘They
may have a little difficulty on the road, but
they will get here all the same. A priest who
brings the Blessed Sacrament has more than
the strength of a man.’ His mild eyes shone
with a faith that knows no bounds.

‘Yes, power beyond the strength of a man
has a priest bearing the Blessed Sacrament. It
was three years ago that they summoned me
to care for a sick man on the lower Mistassini ;
at once I saw that I could do nothing for him,
and I bade them go fetch a priest. It was
night-time and there was not a man in the
house, the father himself being sick and his

232

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

boys quite young. And so at the last it was I
that went. On the way back we had to cross the
river; the ice had just gone out — it was in the
spring — and as yet not a boat had been put
into the water. We found a great heavy tub
that had been lying in the sand all winter, and
when we tried to run her down to the water she
was buried so deep in the sand and was so
heavy that the four of us could not so much
as make her budge. Simon Martel was there,
big Lalancette of St. Methode, a third I cannot
call to mind, and myself ; and we four, hauling
and shoving to break our hearts as we thought
of this poor fellow on the other side of the
river who was in the way of dying like a
heathen, could not stir that boat a single inch.
Well, the curé came forward; he laid his hand
on the gunwale — ^just laid his hand on the gun¬
wale, like that — ‘Give one more shove,’ said
he; and the boat seemed to start of herself
and slipped down to the water as though she
were alive. The sick man received the sacra¬
ment all right, and died like a Christian just as
day was breaking. Yes, a priest has strength
beyond the strength of men.’

A TRANSLATION

233

Maria was still sighing, but her heart dis¬
covered a melancholy peace in the certainty
and nearness of death. This unknown dis¬
order, the dread of what might be coming, these
were dark and terrifying phantoms against
which one strove blindly, uncomprehendingly.
But when one was face to face with death it¬
self all to be done was plain — ordained these
many centuries by laws beyond dispute. By
day or night, from far or near, the curé comes
bearing the Holy Sacrament— across angry
rivers in the spring, over the treacherous ice,
along roads choked with snow, fighting the
bitter north-west wind; aided by miracles, he
never fails; he fulfils his sacred office, and
thenceforward there is room for neither doubt
nor fear. Death is but a glorious preferment,
a door that opens to the joys unspeakable of
the elect.

, The wind had risen and was shaking the
partitions as window-panes rattle in a sudden
gust. The norVester came howling over the
dark tree-tops, fell upon the clearing about
the little wooden buildings — house, stable,
barn — in squalls and wicked whirl-winds that

234

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

sought to lift the roof and smote the walls like
a battering-ram, before sweeping onward to
the forest in a baffled fury.

The house trembled from base to chimney-
top, and swayed on its foundation in such
a fashion that the inmates, feeling the on¬
slaught, hearing the roar and shriek of the foe,
were almost as sensible of the terrors of the
storm as though they were exposed to it;
lacking the consciousness of safe retreat that
belongs to those who are sheltered by strong
walls of stone.

Tit’Sèbe cast his eyes about. ‘A good house
you have here; tightly made and warm. Your
father and the boys built it, did they not?
Moreover, you must have a good bit of land
cleared by this time . .

So loud was the wind that they did not hear
the sound of sleigh-bells, and suddenly the door
flew open against the wall and the curé of St.
Henri entered, bearing the Host in his raised
hands. Maria and Tit’Sèbe fell upon their
knees ; Tit’Bé ran to shut the door, then also
knelt. The priest put off the heavy fur coat
and the cap white with snow drawn down to

A TRANSLATION

235

his eyes, and instantly approached the sick-bed
as heaven’s envoy bringing pardon and peace.

Ah ! the assurance, the comfort of the divine
promise which dispels the awful mists of death !
While the priest performed the sacred rites,
and his low words mingled with the sighs of the
dying woman, Samuel Chapdelaine and his
children were praying with bended heads; in
some sort consoled, released from anxiousness
and doubt, confident that a sure pact was then
concluding with the Almighty for the blue skies
of Paradise spangled with stars of gold as a
rightful heritage.

Afterwards the curé warmed himself by the
stove; then they prayed together for a time,
kneeling by the bed.

Towards four o’clock the wind leaped to the
south-east, and the storm ended swiftly as a
wave that sinks broken from the shore; in the
strange deep silence after the tumult the mother
sighed, sighed once again, and died.

CHAPTER XV.

Ephrem Surprenant pushed open the door
and stood upon the threshold.

T have come . . .’ He found no other
words, and waited there motionless for a few
seconds, tongue-tied, while his eyes travelled
from Chapdelaine to Maria, from Maria to the
children who sat very still and quiet by the
table ; then he plucked off his cap hastily, as if
in amends for his forgetfulness, shut the door
behind him and moved across to the bed
where the dead woman lay.

They had altered its place, turning the head
to the wall and the foot towards the centre
of the house, so that it might be approached
on both sides. Close to the wall two lighted
candles stood on chairs ; one of them set in a
large candlestick of white metal which the
visitors to the Chapdelaine home had never seen
236

A TRANSLATION

237

before, while for holding the other Maria had
found nothing better than a glass bowl used
in the summer-time for blueberries and wild
raspberries, on days of ceremony.

The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in
the flames which lighted but feebly the face of
the dead. The days of suffering through which
she had passed, or death’s final chill had given
to it a strange pallor and delicacy, the refine¬
ment of a woman bred in the city. Father and
children were at first amazed, and then per¬
ceived in this the tremendous consequence of
her translation beyond and far above them.

Ephrem Surprenant bent his eyes upon the
face for a little, and then kneeled. The prayers
he began to murmur were inaudible, but when
Maria and Tit’Bé came and knelt beside him
he drew from a pocket his string of large beads
and began to tell them in a low voice. The
chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the
table, shaking his head sadly from time to time
as is seemly in the house of mourning, and
because his own grief was deep and sincere.

At last he discovered speech. Tt is a heavy
loss. You were fortunate in your wife, Samuel ;

238

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

no one may question that. Truly you were for¬
tunate in your wife.’

This said, he could go no further ; he sought
in vain for some words of sympathy, and at the
end stumbled into other talk. ‘The weather
is quite mild this evening; we soon shall have
rain. Everyone is saying that it is to be an
early spring.’

To the countryman, all things touching the
soil which gives him bread, and the alternate
seasons which lull the earth to sleep and awak¬
en it to life, are of such moment that one may
speak of them even in the presence of death
with no disrespect. Their eyes turned quite
naturally to the square of the little window,
but the night was black and they could discern
nothing.

Ephrem Surprenant began anew to praise
her who was departed. ‘In all the parish there
was not a braver-spirited woman than she, nor
a cleverer housewife. How friendly too, and
what a kind welcome she always gave a visitor !
In the old parishes — ^yes ! and even in the towns
on the railway, not many would be found to
match her. It is only the truth to say that you

A TRANSLATION

239

were rarely suited in your wife . . Soon
afterwards he rose, and, leaving the house, his
face was dark with sorrow.

A long silence followed, in which Samuel
Chapdelaine’s head nodded slowly towards his
breast and it seemed as though he were falling
asleep. Maria spoke quickly to him, in fear of
his offending: — ‘Father! Do not sleep!’

‘No ! No !’ He sat up straight on his chair
and squared his shoulders but since his eyes
were closing in spite of him, he stood up hastily,
saying : — ‘Let us recite another chaplet.’

Kneeling together beside the bed, they told
the chaplet bead by bead. Rising from their
knees they heard the rain patter against the
window and on the shingles. It was the first
spring rain and proclaimed their freedom: the
winter ended, the soil soon to reappear, rivers
once more running their joyous course, the
earth again transformed like some lovely girl
released at last from an evil spell by touch of
magic wand. But they did not allow them¬
selves to be glad in this house of death, nor
indeed did they feel the happiness of it in the
midst of their hearts’ deep affliction.

240

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

Opening the window they moved back to it
and hearkened to the tapping of the great drops
upon the roof. Maria saw that her father’s
head had fallen, and that he was very still;
she thought his evening drowsiness was master¬
ing him again, but when about to waken him
with a word, he it was who sighed and began
to speak.

‘Ephrem Surprenant said no more than the
truth. Your mother was a good woman,
Maria ; you will not find her like.’

Maria’s head answered him ‘Yes,’ but her
lips were pressed close.

‘Full of courage and good counsel, that she
has been throughout her life ; but it was chiefly
in the early days after we were married, and
then again when Esdras and yourself were
little, that she showed herself the woman she
was. The wife of a small farmer looks for no
easy life, but women who take to their work
as well and as cheerfully as she did in those
days, Maria, are hard to find.’

Maria faltered: — ‘I know, father; I know it
well ;’ and she dried her eyes for her heart was
melting into tears.

A TRANSLATION

241

When we took up our first land at Norman-
din we had two cows and very little pasture for
them, as nearly all our lot was in standing tim¬
ber and hard to win for the plough. As for me,
I picked up my ax and I said to her: — “Laura,
I am going to clear land for you.” And from
morning till night it was chop, chop, chop, with¬
out ever coming back to the house except for
dinner; and all that time she did the work of
the house and the cooking, she looked after the
cattle, mended the fences, cleaned the cow-shed,
never rested from her toiling; and then half-
a-dozen times a day she would come outside
the door and stand for a minute looking at me,
over there by the fringe of the woods, where I
was putting my back into felling the birches
and the spruce to make a patch of soil for her.’

‘^THen in the month of July our well must
needs dry up; the cows had not a drop of
water to slake their thirst and they almost
stopped giving milk. So when I was hard at it
in the woods the mother went off to the river
with a pail in either hand, and climbed the
steep bluff eight or ten times together with these
Brimming, and her feet that slipped back in the

242

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

running sand, till she had filled a barrel; and
when the barrel was full she got it on a wheel¬
barrow, and wheeled it off herself to empty it
into the big tub in the cow-pasture more than
three hundred yards from the house, just be¬
low the rocks. It was not a woman’s work, and
I told her often enough to leave it to me, but
she always spoke up briskly: — “Don’t you
think about that — don’t think about anything
— clear a farm for me.” And she would laugh
to cheer me up, but I saw well enough this
was too much for her, and that she was all dark
under the eyes with the labour of it.’

‘Well, I caught up my ax and was off to the
woods; and I laid into the birches so lustily
that chips flew as thick as your wrist, all tHê
time saying to myself that the wife I had was
like no other, and that if the good God only kept
me in health I would make her the best farm in
the countryside.’

The rain was ever sounding on the roof ; now
and then a gust drove against the window great
drops which ran down the panes like slow-fal¬
ling tears. Yet a few hours of rain and the soil
would be bare, streams would dance down every

A TRANSLATION

243

slope; a few more days and they would hear
the thundering of the falls.

‘When we took up other land above Mis¬
tassini/ Samuel Chapdelaine continued, ‘it
was the same thing over again; heavy work
and hardship for both of us alike ; but she was
always full of courage and in good heart . . .
We were in the midst of the forest, but as there
were some open spaces of rich grass among
the rocks we took to raising sheep. One even¬
ing . . .’ He was silent for a little, and when
he began speaking again his eyes were fixed
intently upon Maria, as though he wished to
make very clear to her what he was about to
say.

‘It was in September ; the time when all the
great creatures of the woods become dangerous.
A man from Mistassini who was coming down
the river in a canoe landed near our place and
spoke to us thiswise : — “Look after your sheep ;
the bears came and killed a heifer last week
quite close to the houses.” So your mother and
I went off that evening to the pasture to drive
the sheep into the pen for the night so that the
bears would not devour them.’

244

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘I took one side and she the other, as the
sheep used to scatter among the alders. It was
growing dark, and suddenly I heard Laura cry
out: “Oh, the scoundrels!” Some animals
were moving in the bushes, and it was plain to
see they were not sheep, because in the woods
towards evening sheep are white patches. So,
ax in hand, I started off running as hard as I
could. Later on, when we were on the way
back to the house, your mother told me all
about it. She had come across a sheep lying
dead, and two bears that were just going to eat
it. Now it takes a pretty good man, one not
easily frightened and with a gun in his hand, to
face a bear in September ; as for a woman emp¬
ty-handed, the best thing she can do is to run
for it and not a soul will blame her. But your
mother snatched a stick from the ground and
made straight for the bears, screaming at
them: — “Our beautiful fat sheep! Be off with
you, you ugly thieves, or I will do for you !” I
got there at my best speed, leaping over the
stumps ; but by that time the bears had cleared
off into the woods without showing fight, scared
as could be, because she had put the fear of
death into them.’

A TRANSLATION

245

Maria listened breathlessly ; asking herself if
it was really her mother who had done this
thing — the mother whom she had always known
so gentle and tender-hearted; who had never
given Telesphore a little rap on the head with¬
out afterwards taking him on her knees to com¬
fort him, adding her own tears to his, and
declaring that to slap a child was something to
break one’s heart.

The brief spring shower was already spent;
through the clouds the moon was showing
her face — eager to discover what was left of
the winter’s snow after this earliest rain. As
yet the ground was everywhere white; the
night’s deep silence told them that many days
must pass before they would hear again the
dull roaring of the cataract; but the tem¬
pered breeze whispered of consolation and
promise.

Samuel Chapdelaine lapsed into silence for
a while, his head bowed, his hands resting
upon his knees, dreaming of the past with its
toilsome years that were yet so full of brave
hopes. When he took up his tale it was in a
voice that halted, melancholy with self-re¬
proach.

246

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

‘At Normandin, at Mistassini and the other
places we have lived I always worked hard ; no
one can say nay to that. Many an acre of
forest have I cleared and I have built houses
and barns, always saying to myself that one
day we should have a comfortable farm where
your mother would live as do the women in the
old parishes, with fine smooth fields all about
the house as far as the eye could see, a kitchen
garden, handsome well-fed cattle in the farm¬
yard . . . And, after it all, here is she dead
in this half-savage spot, leagues from other
houses and churches, and so near the bush
that some nights one can hear the foxes bark.
And it is my fault that she has died so. . .
My fault. . . My fault.’ Remorse seized him ;
he shook his head at the pity of it, his eyes
upon the floor.

‘Many times it happened, after we had spent
five or six years in one place and all had gone
well, that we were beginning to get together
a nice property — good pasturage, broad fields
ready for sowing, a house lined inside with
pictures from the papers . . . Then people
came and settled about us ; we had but to wait

A TRANSLATION

247

a little, working on quietly, and soon we should
have been in the midst of a well-to-do settle¬
ment where Laura could have passed the rest of
her days in happiness . . . And then all of a
sudden I lost heart ; I got sick and tired of my
work and of the countryside; I began to hate
the very faces of those who had taken up land
near-by and used to come to see us, thinking
that we should be pleased to have a visitor after
being so long out of the way of them. I heard
people saying that farther off towards the head
of the Lake there was good land in the forest ;
that some folk from St. Gedeon spoke of set¬
tling over on that side ; and forthwith I began
to hunger and thirst for this spot they were
talking about, that I had never seen in my life
and where not a soul lived, as for the place of
my birth . . .’

Well, in those days, when the work was
done, instead of smoking beside the stove Î
would go out to the door-step and sit there
without moving, like a man homesick and
lonely; and everything I saw in front of me —
the place I had made with these two hands
after so much of labour and sweat — the fields.

248

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

the fences, across to the rocky hill that shut us
in — I detested them all till I seemed ready to go
out of my mind at the very sight of them/

‘ And then your mother would come quietly
up behind me. She also would look out across
our place, and I knew that she was pleased with
it to the bottom of her heart because it was
beginning to look like the old parish where she
had grown up, and where she would so gladly
have spent her life. But instead of tell¬
ing me that I was no better than a silly old
fool for wishing to leave — as most women
would have done — and finding hard things to
say about my folly, she only sighed a little as
she thought of the drudgery that was to begin
all over again somewhere back in the woods,
and kindly and softly she would say to me: —
“Well, Samuel ! Are we soon to be on the move
once more ?” When she said that I could not an¬
swer, for I was speechless with very shame at
thinking of the wretched life I had given her;
but I knew well enough that it would end
in our moving again and pushing on to the
north, deeper into the woods, and that she
would be with me and take her share in this

A TRANSLATION

249

hard business of beginning anew — as cheerful
and capable and good-humoured as ever, with¬
out one single word of reproach or spiteful¬
ness.’

He was silent after that, and seemed to
ponder long his sorrow and the things which
might have been. Maria, sighing, passed a
hand across her face as though she would brush
away a disquieting vision; but in very truth
there was nothing she wished to forget. What
she heard had moved her profoundly, and she
felt in a dim and troubled way that this story
of a hard life so bravely lived, had for her a
deep and timely significance and held some
lesson if only she might understand it.

‘How little do we know people!’ was the
thought that filled her mind. Since her
mother had crossed the threshold of death she
seemed to wear a new aspect, not of this world ;
and now all the homely and familiar traits
endearing her to them were being overshad¬
owed by other virtues well-nigh heroic in their
quality.

To pass her days in these lonely places when
she would have dearly loved the society of other

250 MARIA CHAPDELAINE

human beings and the unbroken peace of village
life ; to strive from dawn till nightfall, spending
all her strength in a thousand heavy tasks,
and yet from dawn till nightfall never losing
patience nor her happy tranquillity; continu¬
ally to see about her only the wilderness, the
great pitiless forest, and to hold in the midst of
it all an ordered way of life, the gentleness
and the joyousness which are the fruits of many
a century sheltered from such rudeness — was it
not surely a hard thing and a worthy? And the
recompense? After death, a little word of
praise.

Was it worth the cost? The question
scarcely framed itself with such clearness in
her mind, but so her thoughts were tending.
Thus to live, as hardly, as courageously, and
to be so sorely missed when she departed, few
women were fit for this. As for herself . . .

The sky, flooded with moonlight, was of a
wonderful lambency and depth; across the
whole arch of heaven a band of cloud, fashioned
strangely into carven shapes, defiled in solemn
march. The white ground no longer spoke of
chill and desolateness, for the air was soft; and
by some magic of the approaching spring the

A TRANSLATION

251

snow appeared to be only a mask covering the
earth’s face, in nowise terrifying — a mask one
knew must soon be lifted.

Maria seated by the little window, fixed her
unconscious eyes upon the sky and the fields
stretching away whitely to the environing
woods, and of a sudden it was borne to her that
the question she was asking herself had just re¬
ceived its answer. To dwell in this land as her
mother had dwelt, and dying thus to leave be¬
hind her a sorrowing husband and a record of
the virtues of her race, she knew in her heart
she was fit for that. In reckoning with herself
there was no trace of vanity; rather did the
response seem from without. Yes, she was
able; and she wondered in her own heart, as
though surprised at the shining of some new
unlooked-for light.

Thus she too could live ; but ... it was not
as yet in her heart so to do . . . In a little
while, this season of mourning at an end,
Lorenzo Surprenant v/ould come back from
the States for the third time and would bear her
away to the unknown delights of the city —
away from the great forest she hated — away

252

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

from that cruel land where men who go astray
perish helplessly, where women endure endless
torment the while ineffectual aid is sought
for them over the long roads buried in snow.
Why should she stay here to toil and suffer
when she might escape to the lands of the
south and a happier life?

The soft breeze telling of spring came against
the window, bringing a confusion of gentle
sounds ; the swish and sigh of branches
swaying and touching one another, the distant
hooting of an owl. Then the great silence
reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was
sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead
was nothing unseemly or wanting in respect;
chin fallen on his breast, hands lying open
on his knees, he seemed to be plunged into
the very depths of sorrow or striving to relin¬
quish life that he might follow the departed a
little way into the shades.

Again Maria asked herself : — Why stay here,
to toil and suffer thus? Why? . . .’ And
when she found no answer, it befell at length
that out of the silence and the night voices
arose.

No miraculous voices were these ; each of us

A TRANSLATION

253

hears them when he goes apart and withdraws
himself far enough to escape from the petty
turmoil of his daily life. But they speak more
loudly and with plainer accents to the simple-
hearted, to those who dwell among the great
northern woods and in the empty places of the
earth. While yet Maria was dreaming of the
city’s distant wonders the first voice brought
murmuringly to her memory a hundred forgot¬
ten charms of the land she wished to flee.

The marvel of the reappearing earth in the
springtime, after the long months of winter . . .
The dreaded snow stealing away in prankish
rivulets down every slope; the tree-roots first
resurgent, then the mosses drenched with
wet, soon the ground freed from its burden
whereon one treads with delighted glances and
sighs of happiness like the sick man who feels
glad life returning to his veins . . . Later yet,
the birches, alders, aspens swelling into bud;
the laurel clothing itself in rosy bloom . . .
The rough battle with the soil a seeming holi¬
day to men no longer condemned to idleness ;
to draw the hard breath of toil from morn till
eve a gracious favour . . .

254

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

— The cattle, at last set free from their shed,
gallop to the pasture and glut themselves with
the fresh grass. All the new-born creatures —
the calves, the fowls, the lambs, gambol in the
sun and add daily to their stature like the hay
and the barley. The poorest farmer sometimes
halts in yard or field, hands in pockets, and
tastes the great happiness of knowing that the
sun’s heat, the warm rain, the earth’s unstinted
alchemy — every mighty force of nature — is
working as a humble slave for him ... for
him.

— And then, the summertide; the glory of
sunny noons, the heated quivering air that
blurs the horizon and the outline of the forest,
the flies swarming and circling in the sun’s
rays, and but three hundred paces from the
house the rapids and the fall — ^white foam
against dark water — the mere sight of it filling
one with a delicious coolness. In its due time
the harvest; the grain that gives life heaped
into the barns; then autumn and soon the
returning winter . . . But here was the
marvel of it, that the winter seemed no longer

A TRANSLATION

255

abhorrent or terrifying; it brought in its train
the sweet intimacies of a house shut fast, and
beyond the door, with the sameness and the
soundlessness of deep-drifted snow, peace, a
great peace . . .

In the cities were the strange and wonderful
things whereof Lorenzo Surprenant had told,
with others that she pictured to herself con¬
fusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gor¬
geous shops, an easy life of little toil with a
round of small pleasures and distractions.
Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this
restlessness, and, yearning some evening only
for repose and quiet, where would one discover
the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft
touch of that cooler air that draws from the
north-west after set of sun, the wide-spreading
peacefulness that settles on the earth sinking
to untroubled sleep.

‘And yet they must be beautiful !’ thought
she, still dreaming of those vast American
cities ... As though in answer, a second
voice was raised.

— Over there was it not a stranger land
where people of an alien race spoke of unfam-

256

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

iliar things in another tongue, sang other
songs? Here . . .

— The very names of this her country, those
she listened to every day, those heard but once,
came crowding to memory : a thousand names
piously bestowed by peasants from France on
lakes, on rivers, on the settlements of the new
country they were discovering and peopling as
they went — lac à TEau-Claire — la Famine —
Saint-Coeur-de-Marie — ^Trois-Pistoles — Sainte
Rose-du-Dégel — Pointe-aux-Outardes — Saint-
André-de-PEpouvante . . . An uncle of Eu-
trope Gagnon’s lived at Saint-André-de-l’E-
pouvante; Racicot of Honfleur spoke often
of his son who was a stoker on a Gulf coaster,
and every time new names were added to the
old; names of fishing villages and little har¬
bours on the St. Lawrence, scattered here
and there along those shores between which
the ships of the old days had boldly sailed
towards an unknown land — Pointe-Mille-
Vaches — les Escoumins — Notre-Dame-du-Por-
tage — les Grandes-Bergeronnes — Gaspe.

— How sweet to hear these names where one
was talking of distant acquaintance and kins-

A TRANSLATION

257

folk, or telling of far journeys ! How dear and
neighbourly was the sound of them, with a
heart-warming friendly ring that made one feel
as he spoke them: — ‘Throughout all this land
we are at home ... at home . .

— Westward, beyond the borders of the Prov¬
ince; southward, across the line were every¬
where none but English names. In time one
might learn to speak them, even might
they at last come familiarly to the ear; but
where should one find again the happy music
of the French names?

— Words of a foreign speech from every lip,
on every street, in every shop . . . Little girls
taking hands to dance a round and singing a
song one could not understand , . . Here . . .

Maria turned towards her father who still
slept with his chin sunk on his breast, looking
like a man stricken down by grief whose med¬
itation is of death; and the look brought her
swift memory of the hymns and country songs
he was wont to teach his children in the
evenings.

A la claire fontaine
M"en allant promener . . .

258

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

In those cities of the States, even if one
taught the children how to sing them would
they not straightway forget !

The clouds a little while ago drifting singly
across a moonlit sky were now spread over the
heavens in a vast filmy curtain, and the dim
light passing through it was caught by the
earth’s pale coverlet of melting snow; between
the two wan expanses the ranks of the forest
darkly stretched their long battle-front.

Maria shuddered; the emotion which had
glowed in her heart was dying ; once again she
said to herself : ‘And yet it is a harsh land, this
land of ours . . . Why should I linger here.?’

Then it was that a third voice, mightier than
the others, lifted itself up in the silence: the
voice of Quebec — now the song of a woman,
now the exhortation of a priest. It came to
her with the sound of a church bell, with the
majesty of an organ’s tones, like a plaintive
love-song, like the long high call of woodsmen
in the forest. For verily there was in it all that
makes the soul of the Province: the loved
solemnities of the ancestral faith; the lilt of
that old speech guarded with jealous care* the

A TRANSLATION

259

grandeur and the barbaric strength of this new
land where an ancient race has again found its
youth.

Thus spake the voice : — ‘Three hundred years
ago we came, and we have remained . . .
They who led us hither might return among us
without knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be
true that we have little learned, most surely
nothing is forgot.’

‘We bore overseas our prayers and our
songs ; they are ever the same. We carried in
our bosoms the hearts of the men of our father-
land, brave and merry, easily moved to pity
as to laughter, of all human hearts the most
human; nor have they changed. We traced
the boundaries of a new continent, from Gaspé
to Montreal, from St. Jean dTberville to Un-
gava, saying as we did it: Within these limits
all we brought with us, our faith, our tongue,
our virtues, our very weaknesses are henceforth
hallowed things which no hand may touch,
which shall endure to the end.’

^Strangers Havé surrounded us whom it is
our pleasure to call foreigners ; they have taken
intc their hands most of the rule, they have

260

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

gathered to themselves much of the wealth ; but
in this land of Quebec nothing has changed.
Nor shall anything change, for we are the
pledge of it. Concerning ourselves and our
destiny, but one duty have we clearly under¬
stood : that we should hold fast — should endure.
And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many
centuries hence the world will look upon us
and say: — These people are of a race that
knows not how to perish ... We are a testi¬
mony.’

‘For this is it that we must abide in that
Province where our fathers dwelt, living as they
have lived, so to obey the unwritten command
that once shaped itself in their hearts, that
passed to ours, which we in turn must hand on
to descendants innumerable: — In this land of
Quebec naught shall die and naught shall suffer
change . . .’

The veil of gray cloud which hid the whole
heavens had become heavier and more louring,
and suddenly the rain began afresh bringing
yet a little nearer that joyous hour when the
earth would lie bare and the rivers be freed.
Samuel Chapdelaine slept profoundly, his head

A TRANSLATION

261

sunk upon his breast, an old man yielding at
last to the long fatigues of his lifetime of toil.
Above the candlestick of metal and the glass
bowl the candle flames wavered under gentle
breaths from the window, and shadows flitting
across the face of the dead woman made her
lips seem to be moving in prayer or softly telling
secrets.

Maria Chapdelaine awaked from her dream
to the thought: — ‘So I shall stay — shall stay
here after all V For the voices had spoken com-
mandingly and she knew she could not choose
but obey. It was only then that the recollection
of other duties came, after she had submitted,
and a sigh had passed her lips. Alma Rose was
still a child ; her mother dead, there must be a
woman in the house. But in truth it was the
voices which had told her the way.

The rain was pattering on the roof, and
nature, rejoicing that winter was past, sent soft
little wandering airs through the casement as
though she were sighing in content. Through¬
out the hours of the night Maria moved not;
with hands folded in her lap, patient of spirit
and without bitterness, yet dreaming a little

262

MARIA CHAPDELAINE

sadly of the far-off wonders her eyes would
never behold and of the land wherein she was
bidden to live with its store of sorrowful mem¬
ories; of the living flame at which her heart
had warmed itself awhile and lost forever, and
the deep snowy woods whence too daring youths
may not return.

CHAPTER XVL

Esdras and Da’Bé came down from the shan¬
ties in May, and their grieving brought freshly
to the household the pain of bereavement. But
the naked earth was lying ready for the seed,
and mourning must not delay the season’s la¬
bours.

Eutrope Gagnon was there one evening to
pay them a visit, and a glance he stole at Ma¬
ria’s face perhaps told him of a change m her,
for when they were alone he put the question : —
‘Maria, do you still think of going away.?’

Her eyes were lowered, as with a motion of
her head she signified ‘No.’

‘Then ... I know very well that this is
no time for speaking of such things, but if only
you could say there is a chance for me some
day, then I could bear the waiting better.’

And Maria answered him: — ‘Yes ... If
you wish I will marry you as you asked me to
. . . In the spring after this spring now — when
the men come back from the woods for the
sowing.’

263

Printed and Bound in Canada

Press of Tlie Hunter-Rose Co., Limited, Toronto

PS 9465 E5H M3 E5 1921 C-2
HEMON LOUIS 1880-1913
MâRU CHâPOÉLAINE/

40866503 CURR HIST

-0000Z6497727-

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